THE  LIBRARY 

OF 
THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


THE    SPRINGS    OF    HELICON 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

SELECT  EPIGRAMS  FROM  THE  GREEK 
ANTHOLOGY.  Edited,  with  Revised  Text, 
Translation,  Introduction,  and  Notes.  8vo,  145. 
net. 

Greek  Text  (Pocket  Edition),  fcp.  8vo,  gilt  top, 
2s.  net ;  leather,  35.  net. 

Translation  (Pocket  Edition),  fcp.  8vo,  gilt  top, 
as.  net ;  leather,  35.  net. 

THE  ECLOGUES  AND  GEORGICS  OF 
VIRGIL.  Translated  from  the  Latin  into  English 
Prose.  Square  i6mo,  55. 

BIBLIA  INNOCENTIUM.  Part  I.:  being  the 
Story  of  God's  Chosen  People  before  the  Coming 
of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  upon  Earth,  written  anew 
for  Children.  Crown  8vo,  gilt  top,  6s. 

lilBLIA  INNOCENTIUM.  Part  II.  :  being  the 
Story  of  God's  Chosen  People  after  the  Coming  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  upon  Earth,  written  anew 
for  Children.  Crown  8vo,  55. 

THE  SAYINGS  OF  THE  LORD  JESUS 
CHRIST  AS  RECORDED  BY  HIS  FOUR 
EVANGELISTS.  Collected  and  Arranged  by 
J.  W.  MACKAIL.  Crown  8vo,  zs.  6d. 

THE  LIFE  OF  WILLIAM  MORRIS.  With  2 
Photogravure  Portraits  and  8  other  Illustrations. 
2  vols.  Large  crown  8vo,  IDS.  net. 

LONGMANS,  GREEN  &  CO. 

LONDON,  NEW  YORK,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 


THE  SPRINGS  OF  HELICON 

A  STUDY  IN  THE  PROGRESS  OF  ENGLISH 
POETRY    FROM    CHAUCER   TO    MILTON 


BY 


J.  W.  MACKAIL 

M.A.,    LL.D.,    SOMETIME    FELLOW    OF    BALLIOL    COLLEGE 
PROFESSOR  OF   POETRY   IN   THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   OXFORD 


LONGMANS,    GREEN,    AND    CO. 

39   PATERNOSTER    ROW,    LONDON 

NEW  YORK,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 

1909 


All  rights  reserved 


Colleg* 
Uteur 


?R 

SO  3 


FROM   HELICON'S   HARMONIOUS   SPRINGS 

A  THOUSAND   RILLS   THEIR  MAZY   PROGRESS  TAKE 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


INTRODUCTION 

CHAUCER         l 

SPENSER 71 

MILTON '35 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  substance  of  this  volume  consists  of  lectures 
given  from  the  Chair  of  Poetry  at  Oxford  in  the 
autumn  terms  of  the  years  1906  to  1908.  They 
have  been  revised  and  slightly  expanded  for  the 
purposes  of  publication. 

The  volume  is,  as  its  title  states,  a  study  in  the 
progress  of  English  poetry.  It  forms  one  chapter 
in  the  subject  with  which  the  author  proposed  to 
deal  during  his  tenure  of  the  Chair  ;  that  subject 
being  the  Progress  of  Poetry,  or  in  other  words, 
the  consideration  of  poetry  as  a  progressive  func- 
tion and  continuous  interpretation  of  life.  Poetry 
may  be  thus  regarded,  and  it  is  thus  that  Gray 
regards  it  in  his  great  Ode,  whether  in  relation 
to  the  life  of  the  individual  from  youth  to  age, 
to  the  life  of  a  single  nation  or  language,  or  to  the 
larger  movement  and  progress  of  the  life  of  man- 
kind as  it  successively  embodies  itself  in  different 
ages  and  countries,  and  is  there  re-embodied  and 
reinterpreted  by  art.  The  progress  of  our  own 
poetry  between  Chaucer  and  Milton  is  a  single  cycle, 


x  INTRODUCTION 

but  to  the  English-speaking  nations  one  of  cardinal 
importance,  in  the  vast  endless  movement  which  is 
co-extensive  with  history. 

There  are  three  principal  ways  of  studying  that 
cycle,  according  to  the  object  which  is  primarily  in 
view.  For  the  historian  of  poetry,  it  is  necessary 
to  deal  with  the  subject  in  detail,  to  consider  both 
the  greater  and  the  lesser  poets,  and  to  give  a 
systematic  account  of  the  whole  poetic  production 
of  the  period  with  which  he  deals.  For  the  philo- 
sophical investigator,  to  whom  the  value  of  poetry 
lies  mainly  in  the  ideas  which  it  embodies,  in  the 
criticism  of  life  (to  use  Arnold's  famous  phrase) 
which  it  offers,  the  historical  aspect  of  its  progress 
is  of  secondary  importance,  and  the  main  body  of 
its  product  attracts  only  a  cursory  regard.  But  to 
that  more  inclusive  view  which  the  progress  of 
criticism  is  always  striving  to  attain,  both  the  accu- 
mulation of  material  and  the  refinement  of  analysis 
are  but  means,  not  ends.  The  life  in  poetry,  the 
appreciation  of  poetry  in  its  vital  quality,  is  the 
object  of  study.  The  record  or  classification  of 
actual  works  of  art,  the  determination  of  the  ideas 
or  impulses  which  art  expresses,  are  alike  subor- 
dinate to  the  appreciation  of  art  itself  as  a  vital 
energy.  The  office  of  criticism,  thus  regarded,  is 
to  interpret  art  in  something  of  the  same  way  as  art 
interprets  life. 

From  this  point  of  view,  as  for  other  reasons  also, 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

it  is  desirable  to  concentrate  attention  upon  the  great 
poets,  those  in  whom  the  vital  progress  of  poetry 
has  realised  itself  most  fully.  They  give  the  master- 
words  to  the  whole  language  of  creative  imagination. 
In  our  own  literature,  Chaucer,  Spenser,  and  Milton 
have  been  the  subject  of  so  much  long  and  minute 
study,  that  for  criticism  to  return  to  them  now 
might  seem  like  labouring  in  a  thrice- ploughed  field. 
But  in  truth  not  only  is  that  field  inexhaustible,  but 
each  generation  must  work  it  anew  to  gain  its  own 
food.  "Likewise  Earth,  the  Most  High  of  Gods, 
the  unwasting,  the  unweariable,  he  grinds  down  as 
the  ploughs  go  backward  and  forward,  year  upon 
year  :  "  this  is  the  central  note  in  the  miraculousness 
of  human  life  as  it  receives  expression  from  Sophocles 
in  the  Antigone.  The  most  high  poets,  unwasting 
also  and  unweariable,  not  only  repay,  but  require, 
perpetual  reinterpretation.  To  each  age,  to  each 
reader,  they  come  in  a  new  light  and  bear  a  fresh 
significance :  the  progress  of  critical  appreciation 
follows  the  progress  of  poetry  ;  and  the  whole  inter- 
pretation of  the  past  becomes,  in  its  turn,  a  part 
of  the  thing  to  be  interpreted. 

Gray's  Ode  is  not  only  a  lyric  poem  of  me  first 
order :  it  is  also  a  distilled  and  concentrated  body 
of  criticism  by  the  most  accomplished  scholar  and 
finest  critic  of  his  time.  Every  word  in  it  is  weighed 
and  measured,  and  it  only  yields  its  full  meaning  to 
exact  and  minute  study.  When  he  speaks  of  the 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

springs  of  Helicon  as  the  source  of  poetry,  he  is  not 
merely  using  a  traditional  metaphor ;  he  also  lays 
stress  on  the  organic  connection  of  the  whole  of 
Western  poetry  with  Hellenic  origins.  The  move- 
ment of  poetry,  as  he  says  elsewhere,  was  from 
Greece  to  Italy,  and  from  Italy  to  England.  In  the 
three  representative  poets  of  whose  work  this  volume 
is  a  study,  we  see  English  poetry  filled  at  successive 
levels  from  those  foreign  yet  kindred  springs.  The 
achievement  of  Chaucer  was  the  absorption  of  the 
earlier  Renaissance,  as  it  is  represented  in  poetry  by 
Dante  and  by  his  two  chief  successors,  Petrarch  and 
Boccaccio.  That  of  Spenser  was  the  absorption  of 
the  fully-developed  Renaissance,  the  art  of  redis- 
covered Greece  and  reconquered  Rome  as  it  took 
shape  in  the  European  poetry  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  Milton  retraced  the  stream  to  the  heights 
where  it  was  born  ;  with  a  fuller  training  and  a  more 
disciplined  scholarship  he  passed  beyond  those  inter- 
mediate sources  to  the  fountain-heads ;  he  won  his 
way  to  the  springs  of  Helicon,  and  gave  to  England 
a  poetry  which  was  for  the  first  time  fully  classical, 
which  stands  as  art  on  the  same  level  with  the  Greek 
classics.  In  the  progress  made  through  the  work 
of  the  three  poets  we  see  English  poetry  entering 
into  its  full  inheritance. 

It  may  be  desirable  to  add  a  word  with  regard  to 
the  form  in  which  quotations  appear  in  this  volume, 
as  regards  modernisation  or  standardisation  of  spell- 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

ing.  Our  older  poetry  loses  something  by  departure 
from  the  exact  form  in  which  it  originally  appeared ; 
but  it  gains  more  by  such  modification  as  lets  it  be 
read  without  needless  difficulty.  English  spelling 
has  materially  altered  since  the  end  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  but  in  the  great  English  classics,  the  works 
which  are  always  being  read,  the  modification  which 
has  gone  on  in  the  living  language  has  been  naturally 
and  rightly  followed  in  the  works  of  those  who  have 
continued  to  be  living  authors.  This  is  notably  so  with 
Shakespeare ;  exact  reprints  of  the  original  quartos 
and  folios  are  made  for  professional  students  or  for 
curious  amateurs,  but  the  world  reads  Shakespeare 
in  the  spelling  of  its  own  time.  The  Authorised 
Version  of  the  Bible  has  followed  the  same  process, 
and  indeed  a  reprint  of  the  original  volume  of  1 6 1 1 
has  only  once  been  made  in  modern  times,  and  is 
practically  inaccessible.  In  this  respect  Milton  may 
claim  a  footing  alongside  of  those  others  as  being, 
like  them,  a  living  classic  who  has  never  suffered 
eclipse  or  submergence.  A  good  case  might  no 
doubt  be  made  for  retaining  a  few  spellings  which 
are  peculiar  to  Milton,  or  at  least  characteristic  of 
him  :  it  may  be  urged  that  where  he  deliberately 
used  words  like  higth  and  sovran,  it  is  a  corruption 
of  the  text  to  replace  these  by  height  and  sovereign. 
But  this  principle  would  in  logic  carry  us  further 
than  the  common  sense  of  readers  might  be  inclined 
to  go  ;  it  would  oblige  us  to  do  as  we  are  directed 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

in  the  curious  list  of  errata  added  to  the  later  issue 
of  the  first  edition  of  Paradise  Lost,  and  print  hunderd 
instead  of  hundred.  For  those — and  they  are  not 
after  all  very  many — who  wish  to  read  Milton  in  the 
exact  form  of  the  original  editions,  Canon  Beeching's 
text  is  available ;  the  rest  of  the  world  will  be  con- 
tent to  read  Milton  as  they  read  Shakespeare  and 
the  English  Bible. 

With  Spenser  the  problem  is  different.  Not  only 
was  Elizabethan  spelling  in  any  case  erratic,  but 
Spenser's  own  spelling  was  deliberately  eccentric;  it 
was  one  which  he  adopted,  or  rather  invented,  in 
order  to  give  an  archaistic  colour  to  his  poetry. 
This  eccentricity,  while  it  is  interesting  from  the 
light  it  throws  upon  his  relation  to  earlier  English 
poets,  and  in  particular  upon  his  attitude  towards 
Chaucer,  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  poetical  quality, 
or  in  the  main  with  the  rhythmical  and  metrical 
quality  of  his  own  work.  Where  it  affects  rhyme 
or  cadence  materially  it  has  to  be  retained ;  else- 
where it  seems  better  ignored.  Had  the  Faerie 
Queene  entered  into  the  life  of  the  English  people 
in  the  same  way  as  the  Paradise  Lost,  the  spelling  of 
the  former  poem  would  also  have  been  gradually 
and  instinctively  modernised;  and  this  process  would 
undoubtedly  have  meant  not  merely  that  the  Faerie 
Queene  was  more  read  than  it  has  been,  but  also  that 
it  was  more  readable  than  it  actually  is. 

How  far  a  similar   process  of  modernisation   is 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

legitimate  or  practicable  with  Chaucer  is  a  more 
difficult  question.  The  fountain  -  head  of  the 
streams  of  our  modern  Helicon,  he  is  at  the  same 
time  the  last  and  greatest  of  the  Middle-English 
poets.  His  language  is  not  modern  English,  much 
as  the  language  of  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  is  not 
classic  Greek.  We  do  not  know  how  far  the 
spelling  of  the  Homeric  poems  was  modernised  in 
the  process  traditionally  known  under  the  name 
of  the  Pisistratean  recension,  which  launched  them 
afresh  upon  the  main  current  of  Greek  life.  But 
whatever  that  may  have  been,  the  text  of  Chaucer 
has  never  gone  through  any  analogous  modernisa- 
tion ;  and  the  result  is  that  to  the  ordinary  reader 
at  the  present  day  his  text,  if  printed  in  accordance 
with  the  best  MS.  authority,  presents  a  difficulty 
which  is  really  great  even  though  it  may  be  super- 
ficial, while,  if  modernised,  it  has  to  be  modernised 
variously  by  individual  judgment.  But  Chaucer 
himself  has  said  pretty  well  all  that  can  be  said  on 
the  matter : — 

And  for  there  is  so  great  diversity 
In  English  and  in  writing  of  our  tongue, 
So  pray  I  God  that  none  miswrite  thee 
Ne  thee  mismetre  for  defaut  of  tongue  ; 
And  read  whereso  thou  be,  or  elles  sung, 
That  thou  be  understonde  I  God  beseech ! 
But  yet  to  purpose  of  my  rather  speech. 

The  principle  followed  in  this  volume,  with  what 
success  must  be  left  to  be  judged  by  the  reader,  is  to 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

keep  strictly  by  the  authentic  text  so  far  as  that  it 
is  a  matter  of  language  rather  than  of  spelling,  but 
to  modernise  or  standardise  the  spelling  to  the 
utmost  extent  consistent  with  that  general  verbal 
fidelity,  wherever  the  meaning  can  be  thus  made 
more  easily  and  immediately  intelligible.  For  the 
want  of  logical  system  and  the  necessary  incon- 
sistencies which  the  adoption  of  this  method  in- 
volves, no  further  apology  will  be  necessary  for 
those  who  have  faced  the  problem  themselves  and 
know  its  difficulties. 


CHAUCER 


ONLY  a  poet  who  possessed  something  of  Chaucer's 
own  genius  could  speak  adequately  of  Chaucer  as  a 
poet ;  and  when  William  Morris,  now  thirty  years 
ago,  declined  the  invitation  to  let  himself  be  nomi- 
nated for  the  Oxford  Chair  of  Poetry,  that  chance 
was  lost.  Chaucer's  work  has  since  then  been  fully 
and  ably  handled  by  professed  students  of  our  earlier 
literature.  Of  Professor  Skeat's  great  edition,  of  the 
knowledge  and  insight  with  which  Professor  Ker  has 
written  on  Chaucer,  with  regard  both  to  his  indi- 
vidual genius  and  to  his  place  in  the  field  of  mediaeval 
letters,  it  would  be  superfluous  to  speak.  But  the 
appreciation  of  Chaucer  in  relation  to  the  vital  pro- 
gress of  poetry  may  be,  and  indeed  must  be,  kept 
apart  from  the  special  provinces  of  historical  and 
linguistic  study.  Into  the  controversy,  begun  in  the 
sixteenth  century  and  carried  on  intermittently  since, 
whether  Chaucer  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  fountain- 
head  or  the  great  corrupter  of  English,  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  enter.  Nor  is  it  necessary,  though  it  would 
not  be  irrelevant,  to  trace  the  fluctuations  of  his  in- 
fluence or  popularity.  These  belong  to  a  period  in 


4  CHAUCER 

which  the  progress  of  poetry  had  lost  touch  of  him, 
to  an  age  when  his  work  had  not  yet  won  its  place. 
After  the  century  of  his  immediate  influence  and  un- 
questioned primacy,  a  long  time  follows  in  which  we 
may  discern,  even  among  his  chief  admirers,  an  accent 
of  doubt  or  apology.  "  Mr.  Cowley  himself,"  says 
Dryden — how  odd  the  words  sound  now! — "declared 
he  had  no  taste  of  him."  Dryden  goes  on  to  say,  "  No 
man  ever  had,  or  can  have,  a  greater  veneration  for 
Chaucer  than  myself;"  and  Wordsworth,  a  century 
and  a  half  later,  said,  "  I  reverence  and  admire  him 
above  measure."  Yet  Wordsworth  thought  it  not 
unbecoming  to  rewrite  the  Prioress'  Tale,  and  spoil 
it  in  the  process,  as  Dryden  had  rewritten  and  spoiled 
the  Knight's  Tale  before  him.  We  do  not  rewrite 
the  great  classics ;  and  Chaucer  is  now  a  classic. 
As  we  recede  further  from  him,  he  rises  above  the 
intervening  obstacles,  and  stands  clearly  revealed, 
not  merely  as  one  who  (in  his  own  words)  made 
English  sweet  upon  his  tongue ;  not  merely  as  a 
determining  force  in  the  evolution  of  our  poetry,  as 
the  inventor  of  the  heroic  couplet,  or  the  writer 
who  decided  the  contest  between  two  schools  of 
versification  ;  not  merely  as  a  mirror  of  his  own  age, 
an  observer  and  recorder  of  human  life,  a  master 
of  description,  pathos,  humour,  a  story-teller  of  un- 
surpassed skill ;  but,  beyond  all  this,  as  a  great  poet 
and  creator,  an  artist  of  the  first  rank. 

As  in  dealing  with  the  progress  of  poetry  it  is 


THE   GENIUS  OF   CHAUCER  5 

well  to  concentrate  upon  the  great  poets,  so  in  deal- 
ing with  a  poet  so  copious  and  various  as  Chaucer 
it  is  well  to  concentrate  upon  his  great  poetry. 
Beyond  his  strictly  prose  work,  there  is  much  of  his 
verse  which  scarcely  professes  to  be  poetry  at  all,  or 
at  all  events  poetry  of  a  high  order.  One  of  his 
special  qualities,  indeed,  is  the  amazing  ease,  the 
unconscious  grace,  with  which  he  passes  from  light 
facile  verse  to  poetry  of  noble  sweetness,  lovely 
melody,  high  imagination.  He  does  not,  as  some 
poets  do,  give  the  impression  of  being  subject  to 
waves  of  inspiration  which  now  raise  his  poetry 
to  a  high  tension,  and  now  fall  away  and  leave  it 
mechanical  or  uninspired.  It  rather  seems  as  if  he 
used,  varyingly  and  capriciously,  a  poetical  gift  that 
always  came  when  he  chose  to  call  for  it,  and  of 
which  he  never  lost  control.  One  reason  why  he 
is  always  interesting  is  that  the  moment  anything 
ceases  to  interest  him  he  drops  it.  He  leaves  the 
Squire's  Tale  half  told,  and  breaks  off  the  House  of 
Fame  and  the  Legend  of  Good  Women  in  the  middle 
of  a  sentence.  He  begins  a  letter  from  Dido  to 
Aeneas,  and  after  a  dozen  lines  gets  tired  of  it,  and 
calmly  proceeds — 

But  who  will  all  this  letter  have  in  mind 
Read  Ovid,  and  in  him  he  shall  it  find. 

Yet  this  easy  nonchalance  goes  together  with  an  in- 
stinctive felicity  which  might  make  poets  of  greater 


6  CHAUCER 

effort  and  more  laborious  art  say  despairingly  as  they 
regard  his  work — 

We  blundren  ever  and  poren  in  the  fire, 
And  for  all  that  we  fail  of  our  desire. 

He  has  much  of  the  spirit  of  the  child,  easily  pleased 
and  easily  fatigued,  prone  to  follow  the  suggestions 
of  an  alert  but  vagrant  fancy. 

Love  is  too  young  to  know  what  conscience  is  ; 
Yet  who  knows  not  conscience  is  born  of  love  ? 

And  so  we  may  see  Chaucer  writing  sometimes 
with  a  grace  and  charm  that  are  quite  idle  and  irre- 
sponsible, and  then  kindling  to  some  piteous  or 
tragic  motive,  some  beauty  of  situation  or  splen- 
dour of  passion,  until  the  bird-note  thrills  us  by 
turning  into  the  song  of  an  angel. 

Hence,  in  a  world  which  always  tends  to  be  obtuse 
towards  poetry,  to  feel  safe  with  dulness  and  to  take 
kindly  to  the  second-best,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
Chaucer's  fame  as  a  poet  has  been  much  confused 
with  false  issues.  It  rests,  or  has  rested,  in  great 
part  on  work  which  is  not  his  best,  or  which  is  not 
his  at  all.  To  the  normal  modern  reader  he  is 
known  mainly  through  extracts;  and  it  is  singular 
how  often  these  extracts  seem  chosen  to  miss  his 
highest  poetry,  his  specific  greatness  as  a  poet.  We 
may  be  pretty  sure  to  find  among  them  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  Squire  or  the  Miller,  the  Clerk  of  Oxford 
or  the  Parson — admirable  sketches  of  character, 


THE   GENIUS   OF   CHAUCER  7 

terse,  lifelike,  humorous,  executed  in  quite  fluent 
and  workmanlike  verse,  but  not  exactly  poetry,  or  if 
so,  only  poetry  with  a  difference.  We  may  very 
probably  find  the  Prioress'  Tale,  a  legend  gracefully 
told,  with  a  sort  of  thin  elegance,  suited  admirably 
and  with  perfect  dramatic  instinct  to  the  person  of 
its  narrator,  but  not  poetry  of  the  first  excellence. 
We  may  find  a  few  vignettes  of  landscape,  or  highly 
wrought  descriptive  passages  like  that  of  the  temple 
of  Mars  in  the  Knight's  Tale.  But  we  shall  seldom 
find  anything  that  really  shows  to  what  a  height 
Chaucer's  poetry  can  rise.  We  shall  not  find  the 
Complaint  of  Queen  Anelida,  nor  the  exquisite  nar- 
ratives in  the  Legend  of  Good  Women,  nor  anything 
to  give  a  notion  of  the  sustained  magnificence  and 
mastery  of  the  Book  of  Troilus  and  Greseide.  Even 
for  those  who  know  their  Chaucer  more  fully,  em- 
phasis has  to  be  laid  on  the  first-rate  work  to  dis- 
engage it  from  the  work  that  is  short  of  first-rate, 
from  the  work  that  is  the  poetry  of  his  time  and 
surroundings  rather  than  of  his  own  essential  genius. 
With  Chaucer,  too,  as  with  some  few  others  among 
the  great  poets,  it  is  necessary  to  draw  a  distinction 
between  the  poet  and  the  story-teller.  His  narrative 
gift  is  probably  unsurpassed  ;  it  has  not  been  equalled 
except  by  one  or  two  in  England,  by  a  very  small 
number  anywhere.  It  is  a  gift  of  immense  value  to 
a  poet,  but  it  is  not  the  gift  of  poetry.  It  rises  to 
meet  us  in  its  full  perfection  in  the  author  of  the 


8  CHAUCER 

Odyssey  at  the  very  beginning  of  our  extant  docu- 
ments in  European  poetry.  Among  the  Greek  poets 
subsequent  to  Homer,  or  such  of  them  as  have  sur- 
vived, it  hardly  reappears,  or  at  least  reappears  no- 
where in  any  eminent  degree.  In  Latin  poetry  it 
culminates  in  Ovid.  He  became  the  story-teller  as 
well  as  the  civiliser  of  Western  Europe.  It  is  his 
narrative  gift  which,  even  more  than  his  gaiety  and 
wit,  his  mastery  of  verbal  and  metrical  technique,  or 
his  air  and  tone  of  the  accomplished  man  of  the 
world,  explains  the  immense  influence  he  had  on 
European  letters.  It  was  this,  above  all  else,  which 
made  him  both  to  the  Middle  Ages  and  to  the  Re- 
naissance— even  to  the  grave  regard  of  Dante  and 
the  austere  judgment  of  Milton — rank  as  a  poet 
alongside  of  Homer  and  Virgil.  In  England,  Chaucer 
was  not  only  the  first  great  poet — for  that  title 
can  hardly  be  given  by  any  sane  criticism,  in  its 
full  sense,  to  any  of  his  predecessors — but  the  first 
consummate  story-teller,  as  he  still  remains  the 
best.  .  Few  of  his  successors  inherited  that  rare  gift. 
It  is  conspicuously  absent  from  the  poetry  of  the 
Chaucerians.  Spenser,  with  a  strong  narrative  taste 
(which  is  a  different  thing  from  a  high  narrative 
gift),  took  great  pains  in  manipulating  a  very  com- 
plicated framework  of  narrative  in  the  Faerie  Queene  ; 
but  he  had  no  idea  of  telling  a  story  so  as  to  make 
it  either  clearly  intelligible  or  continuously  interest- 
ing. Milton's  epic  does  not  depend  for  its  quality 


THE   NARRATIVE   GIFT  9 

upon  the  story.  The  story,  if  one  can  call  it  so,  is 
indeed  set  forth  with  great  lucidity  and  ordered 
skill ;  but  its  planetary  wheelings  (for  that  phrase 
aptly  describes  the  constructional  evolution  as  well  as 
the  metrical  movement  of  the  Paradise  Lost)  belong 
to  a  wholly  different  order  of  art.  Pope's  great 
narrative  poem  was  never  written,  and  Shelley's  is 
almost  unreadable.  Byron  possessed  the  power — 
as  what  power  did  he  not  possess  ? — but  squandered 
it.  Keats  was  on  the  road  towards  mastering  it 
when  he  wrote  Lamia.  Among  the  poets  of  that 
age  it  is  most  marked  in  two  who  belong  at  best 
to  the  second  rank,  Scott  and  Crabbe.  Among  the 
great  Victorian  poets  one  only,  Morris,  who  was  a 
Chaucerian  born,  possessed  it.  A  faculty  which  is 
more  apparent  in  the  Odyssey  than  in  the  Iliad,  which 
is  higher  in  Ovid  than  in  Virgil,  which  is  totally  or 
all  but  totally  absent  in  some  of  the  greatest  poets, 
cannot  be  taken  as  a  criterion  of  poetic  quality,  or  as 
part  of  the  essence  of  poetry. 

Mr.  Swinburne  divides  the  work  of  Shakespeare 
into  three  periods,  the  lyric  and  fantastic,  the  comic 
and  historic,  and  the  tragic  and  romantic.  Such 
divisions  are  highly  artificial,  and  must  be  used  with 
caution.  But  in  Chaucer's  poetry  we  may  likewise 
distinguish  three  periods,  each  marked  by  the  pre- 
ponderance of  a  special  quality,  and  each  associated 
with  a  characteristic  metrical  form.  There  is  an 
early  period,  in  which  the  external  influence  on  him 


io  CHAUCER 

was  almost  purely  French  ;  a  central  period,  when  he 
came  under  the  classic  or  Italian  influence ;  and  a 
third,  in  which  his  movement  of  evolution  returns 
upon  itself,  and  comedy  has  in  a  sense  absorbed 
tragedy  by  bringing  the  whole  of  life  into  open  day- 
light. The  terms  lyric  and  fantastic  apply  with 
much  fitness  to  his  earlier  poetry.  Of  his  lyrics 
proper — those  "  balades,  rondels,  virelaies  "  of  which 
he  speaks  in  the  Legend  of  Good  Women ,  but  a  few 
survive.  They  include,  together  with  two  or  three 
fine  balades,  two  pieces  which  touch  the  high-water 
mark  of  the  lyric :  the  triple  roundel  of  Merciless 
Beauty,  and  the  Complaint  of  Anelida^  a  lyric  of  ela- 
borate structure,  exquisite  alike  in  workmanship 
and  feeling.  But  in  these,  as  in  the  longer  poems 
of  the  same  period,  the  fantastic  quality  is  as  marked 
as  the  lyric  beauty.  This  period  of  his  work  would 
set  him  high,  probably  highest,  among  ]the  English 
poets  of  his  age  ;  it  would  not  place  him  among  the 
classics  or  make  him  a  capital  figure  in  our  literature. 
He  was  assiduously  and  delightedly  practising  his 
art  so  far  as  it  had  then  been  revealed  to  him.  The 
development  it  took  when  he  had  finished  his  appren- 
ticeship and  when  his  genius  passed  from  flowering 
into  fruitage  was  determined  from  Italy. 

The  specific  greatness  of  Chaucer  as  a  poet  lies  in 
a  poetic  quality  neither  inherited  nor  acquired,  but 
personal  and  incommunicable.  His  specific  import- 
ance in  the  history  of  literature,  which  is  a  different 


THE   ITALIAN   INFLUENCE          n 

matter,  lies  in  his  having,  alone  in  his  age,  absorbed 
this  Italian  influence,  and  thus  created  for  English 
poetry  a  wholly  new  type  and  aim.  He  brought  it 
— whether  with  or  without  some  loss  of  its  own 
native  qualities — into  relation  with  the  main  stream 
of  the  world's  art.  This  achievement  of  his  was 
what  was  in  Gray's  mind,  when  in  that  allusive  ellip- 
tical manner,  which  sometimes  makes  his  criticism  as 
difficult  to  follow  as  Aristotle's, he  said  that  "Chaucer 
first  introduced  the  manner  of  the  Provengaux,  im- 
proved by  the  Italians,  into  our  country."  Until  he 
did  this,  the  foreign  element  in  the  fertilisation  of 
our  literature  had  been  French.  English  poetry  had 
two  main  currents,  sometimes  intermingling,  some- 
times in  sharp  opposition.  One  was  the  development 
of  its  native  instrument,  the  northern  unrhymed 
verse.  The  other  was  the  adaptation  to  English 
use  of  the  metrical  structure,  and,  together  with  that 
metrical  structure,  the  poetical  forms  and  methods, 
of  the  earlier  or  contemporary  art  of  France.  The 
decisive  predominance  which  Chaucer  gave  to  the 
latter  may  have  been  in  any  case  inevitable.  But 
French  influence  was  not  sufficient — it  never  has 
been — to  create  for  England  a  great  type  of  poetry. 
Two  countries  alone  have  done  this,  Hellas  and 
Italy. 

In  the  fourteenth  century,  the  mediaeval  world, 
while  it  still  appeared  full  of  life,  was  really 
coming  to  an  end.  The  epic  age  of  Western 


12  CHAUCER 

Europe — the  age  of  the  Chansons  de  Gestes,  of  the 
Nibelungenlied  and  the  verse  Edda,  of  the  archi- 
tecture of  the  plein  cintre — had  long  passed  away. 
It  was  succeeded  by  the  epoch  of  the  perfected 
Gothic,  the  age  of  magnificent  expansion  and  bril- 
liant construction.  The  thirteenth  century  produced 
the  Summa  Theologiae,  the  churches  of  Chartres  and 
Westminster,  constitutional  government,  and  that 
body  of  romance  the  splendour  and  copiousness  of 
which  is  still  the  admiration  of  the  world.  Then 
came  a  thing  new  and  unexampled,  at  once  the  con- 
summation and  the  epitaph  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
Dante  and  the  Divine  Comedy.  That  majestic 
genius  stands  apart  and  alone.  His  two  chief  suc- 
cessors, Petrarch  and  Boccaccio,  are  the  founders  of 
modern  poetry. 

They  were  a  generation  older  than  Chaucer ;  and 
they  represent  in  letters  the  change  that  passes  over 
the  world  in  the  fourteenth  century.  The  one 
founded  modern  literature ;  the  other  determined 
the  revival  of  learning.  With  them  we  are  launched 
on  the  full  current  of  the  Renaissance  ;  we  can  fore- 
see Ariosto  and  Tasso,  we  can  foresee  our  own 
Elizabethans.  The  critical  influence  on  Chaucer 
himself  was  that  of  Boccaccio.  It  is  worth  remark- 
ing, in  a  matter  where  substance  is  vitally  connected 
with  form,  that  while  Chaucer's  seven-line  stanza  is 
materially  changed,  both  in  length  and  cadence,  from 
the  classic  Italian  ottava  rima,  and  while  his  rhymed 


THE   ITALIAN   INFLUENCE  13 

decasyllabic  couplet  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes 
an  invention  of  his  own,  both  these  principal  metres 
of  his  have,  as  he  uses  them,  a  closer  affinity  to 
Italian  than  to  French.  But  he  never,  so  far  as 
appears,  tried  to  write  in  the  forms  of  the  Petrarcan 
Sonnet  or  Ode,  and  a  scrap  of  thirty  lines  is  all 
that  we  know  of  any  attempt  made  by  him  to  write 
in  the  Dantesque  terza  rlma.  He  of  course  knew, 
admired,  and  copied  from  both  Dante  and  Petrarch  ; 
but  with  one  remarkable  exception  to  be  noticed 
later,  there  is  little  to  show  that  they  influenced 
him  deeply.  When  he  cites  Dante,  it  is  for 
some  proverbial  sentence  or  for  some  celebrated 
incident.  "  Envy  parteth  neither  night  nor  day 
out  of  the  house  of  Cassar ;  thus  saith  Dant : " 
so  runs  a  passage  in  the  Legend  of  Good  Women. 
In  the  Monk's  Tale  he  recounts  the  story  of 
"Erl  Ugelin  of  Pise,"  following  the  text  of  the 
Inferno  pretty  closely,  and  winding  up  with  the 
words — 

Whoso  will  hear  it  in  a  longer  wise 
Readeth  the  greate  poet  of  Itaile 
That  highte  Dante  : 

and  in  the  preface  to  the  Legend,  of  Saint  Cecilia  he 
translates  the  famous  hymn  to  the  Virgin  in  the  last 
canto  of  the  Paradiso.  But  these  are  mere  detached 
passages.  A  more  striking  instance  is  where  he 
seems  to  have  assimilated  and  reproduced  a  char- 


i4  CHAUCER 

acteristically  Dantesque  simile.  In  the  second  book 
of  Troilus  and  Creseide  come  these  lines — 

But  right  as  floures,  through  the  cold  of  night 
Yclosed  stoopen  on  their  stalkes  low, 
Redressen  them  again  the  sunne  bright, 
And  spreaden  on  their  kinde  course  by  row. 

This  is  a  translation  of  a  passage  in  the  second 
canto  of  the  Inferno — 

Quale  i  fioretti  dal  notturno  gelo 

Chinati  e  chiusi,  poi  che  il  sol  gl'imbianca, 

Si  drizzan  tutti  aperti  in  loro  stelo  ; 

or  as  it  is  rendered  in  Gary's  fine  translation — 

As  florets,  by  the  frosty  air  of  night 

Bent  down  and  closed,  when  day  has  blanched  their 

leaves, 
Rise  all  unfolded  on  their  spiry  stems. 

The  lines  in  Troilus  have  an  unusual  accent  in  them 
at  the  first  approach,  even  before  one  has  realised 
where  they  come  from.  But  Chaucer  did  not  take 
them  from  Dante  at  all :  he  took  them  from  Boc- 
caccio. Boccaccio  had  calmly  stolen  the  three  lines 
as  they  stood  to  open  a  stanza  of  the  Filostrato.  And 
in  Boccaccio  no  less  than  in  Chaucer  they  give  the 
shock  of  strangeness,  the  accent  of  a  more  classic 
and  statelier  verse. 

Another  passage  in  Troilus  and  Creseide  which  has 


THE   ITALIAN   INFLUENCE          15 

the  same  effect  of  strangeness  is  the  song  of  Troilus 
in  the  first  book — 

If  no  love  is,  O  God,  what  feel  I  so  ? 

And  if  love  is,  what  thing  and  which  is  he  ? 

If  love  be  good,  from  whennes  cometh  my  wo  ? 

If  it  be  wicke,  a  wonder  thinketh  me, 

When  every  torment  and  adversity, 

That  cometh  of  him,  may  to  me  savory  think  ; 

For  ay  thirst  I  the  more  that  I  it  drink. 

And  if  that  at  mine  owen  lust  I  brenne, 

From  whennes  cometh  my  wailing  and  my  pleynt  ? 

If  harm  agree  me,  whereto  pleyne  I  then  ? 

I  noot  ne  why  unweary  that  I  feynt. 

O  quicke  death  !     O  sweete  harm  so  queynt ! 

How  may  of  thee  in  me  swich  quantity, 

But  if  that  I  consente  that  it  be  ? 

And  if  that  I  consent,  I  wrongfully 
Compleyne  iwis  :  thus  possed  to  and  fro, 
All  steereless  within  a  boat  am  I 
Amid  the  sea,  betwixen  windes  two, 
That  in  contrary  standen  evermo. 
Alas,  what  is  this  wonder  malady  ? 
For  heat  of  cold,  for  cold  of  heat  I  die. 

So  strange  is  the  accent,  that  one's  first  instinct  is 
to  think  that  Chaucer  is  at  his  favourite  game  of 
parody,  as  he  parodies  the  contemporary  lyric  in 
Absolon's  song  in  the  Miller's  Tale.  But  the  note  of 
the  stanzas  is  Elizabethan ;  and  whatever  Chaucer's 
genius  as  a  poet,  he  could  hardly  parody  the  style 
which  English  poetry  was  to  adopt  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years  later.  The  matter  is  explained  when  we  realise 
that  these  verses  are  translated  from  a  sonnet  by 


1 6  CHAUCER 

Petrarch.  Chaucer  himself  felt  the  difference  in  tone 
and  the  necessity  of  accounting  for  it ;  he  met  it  with 
most  characteristic  and  impudent  humour,  by  in- 
venting on  the  spot  an  ancient  author  of  the  name 
of  Lollius  and  saying  that  the  verses  are  taken  from 
him. 

It  is  then  to  Boccaccio,  but  to  Boccaccio  as  him- 
self profoundly  influenced  or  even  in  a  sense  created 
by  the  two  elder  poets,  that  we  have  to  assign  the 
decisive  impulse  which  made  Chaucer  the  founder  of 
classical  English  poetry.  The  contest  between  French 
and  native  English  forms  was  decided  by  being  lifted 
on  to  a  higher  plane.  Hitherto  any  attempt  at  recon- 
ciliation had  not  been  based  on  any  larger  synthesis. 
Queer  attempts  had  been  made,  as  in  Sir  Gawain  and 
the  Green  Knight^  or  with  greater  success  in  the  Tale  of 
Gamefyn,  to  tack  one  on  to  the  other.  Popular  taste 
was  large  enough  or  vague  enough  to  accept  both. 
The  peasantry  of  Southern  England,  on  the  unim- 
peachable evidence  of  Langland,  used  both  indif- 
ferently. The  ploughmen,  the  hedgers  and  ditchers, 
of  the  fourteenth  century  not  only  "  holpen  erie  his 
half  acre"  with  the  purely  English  songs  lumped 
under  the  generic  title  of  How  trolli  lolli,  but  "  dryven 
forth  the  longe  day  "  with  the  French  ditty  of  Dieu 
vous  save,  dame  Emme.  The  immense  volume  of 
metrical  romances  had  developed,  in  rhyming  sys- 
tems of  French  origin,  forms  of  stanza  specifically 
English,  and  had  transferred  to  them  much  of  the 


THE   ENGLISH   RENAISSANCE         17 

alliteration  and  cadence  of  native  poetry.  Lang- 
land's  own  poem  (we  may  call  it  Langland's  for 
brevity,  without  being  committed  to  any  view  as  to 
the  authorship  of  its  successive  forms),  the  only 
work  of  Chaucer's  contemporaries  that  shows  sus- 
tained power  combined  with  high  imagination,  ap- 
pears to  be  intentionally  archaistic,  to  represent  the 
last  effort  of  purely  English  poetry  to  assert  itself 
against  a  culture  which  was  no  longer  self-contained 
and  insular.  But  whatever  might  have  happened 
without  Chaucer,  what  Chaucer  did  was  decisive. 

It  was  even  too  decisive.  He  brought  the  Re- 
naissance into  England  before  the  time.,  We  have 
to  wait  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  for  the  English 
Petrarch.  The  welter  into  which  English  poetry 
fell  for  more  than  a  century  after  Chaucer's  death 
is  not  to  be  accounted  for  by  civil  wars  and  religi- 
ous controversies.  The  soil  was  not  ready  for  the 
Italian  influence  to  strike  root.  The  earlier  Eliza- 
bethans had  to  learn  all  the  lesson  over  again,  and 
to  learn  it  in  an  age  when  the  Renaissance  had 
outlived  its  morning  glory,  had  become  overbur- 
dened and  sophisticated.  Even  the  language  had  in 
their  time,  though  it  had  gained  immensely  in  power 
and  range,  lost  something  of  its  early  freshness,  its 
flexibility  and  fluency.  Its  province — I  speak  of  the 
language  of  poetry — was  already  encroached  upon  ; 
it  held  a  divided  empire  with  prose.  The  science 
of  poetry,  if  we  may  use  that  term  to  express 

B 


1 8  CHAUCER 

the  side  of  poetry  that  can  be  studied,  taught, 
and  transmitted,  had  to  be  refounded.  Marlowe 
had  to  rediscover  and  remould  that  heroic  couplet 
which  had  already  reached  perfection  before  it  left 
its  first  creator's  hands.  Something  of  the  same 
sort  had  to  be  done  again  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
seventeenth  century  by  Waller  and  Dryden.  The 
history  of  the  forms  of  poetry,  as  of  its  substance, 
is  one  of  progress  ;  there  is  no  finality. 

For  the  earlier  Renaissance,  the  period,  neither 
mediaeval  nor  modern,  which  elapsed  between  the 
rediscovery  of  ancient  Rome  and  the  rediscovery 
of  ancient  Greece,  the  three  great  Italians  of  the 
fourteenth  century  are  the  classics ;  they  represent 
the  central  movement,  the  authentic  line  of  pro- 
gress and  achievement.  A  genius  like  that  of 
Chaucer — facile,  emotional,  somewhat  easy-going — 
required  the  full  impact  of  a  classic  to  raise  him 
beyond  the  sphere  of  his  contemporaries.  Of  the 
three,  it  was  natural  that  Boccaccio,  whose  tempera- 
ment bore  the  greatest  affinity  to  his  own,  should  give 
him  that  impact  most  fully.  The  classical  tone  as 
Boccaccio  represented  it  was  capable  of  solution  and 
incorporation  with  inherited  mediaeval  methods  ;  it 
was  less  tense  than  in  the  two  others,  less  learned, 
less  difficult.  Chaucer  was  not,  like  his  Italian  masters, 
a  trained  scholar  according  to  the  scholarship  of  the 
time.  What  he  thought  of  academic  learning  we  may 
judge  (to  adapt  Swift's  famous  saying)  by  regarding 


CHAUCER'S   CENTRAL   PERIOD       19 

those  upon  whom  he  has  thought  fit  to  bestow  it. 
He  lavishes  it  most  freely  on  that  highly  cultured 
woman,  Alison  of  Bath,  who  makes  citations  from 
Seneca  and  Juvenal,  from  Valerius  Maximus  and 
Boethius,  and  whose  reading  ranged  from  Ovid's 
Art  of  Love  to  Ptolemy's  Almagest. 

The  scholarship  of  Dante  or  of  Petrarch  was  some- 
thing quite  beyond  Chaucer's  scope.  Even  in  the 
easier  form  in  which  it  reached  him,  the  classical 
influence  only  took  effect  upon  a  comparatively  brief 
central  period  of  his  work.  As  with  many  artists 
who  have  lived  long  enough  to  complete  their  orbit, 
his  latest  work  shows  a  reversion  to  the  ideals  and 
methods  of  his  earliest,  only  in  an  enlarged  and 
matured  manner.  Their  culminating  point  has  been 
reached  at  the  cost  of  great  effort  at  high  tension. 
As  that  tension  relaxes,  the  earlier  influences  resume 
something  of  their  old  potency.  In  the  romances 
which  represent  Shakespeare's  latest  work  we  find, 
mellowed  to  a  new  loveliness  of  tone,  that  lyric  and 
fantastic  quality  which  is  the  note  of  his  first  period. 
The  sustained  tension  of  his  great  central  group  of 
tragedies,  the  almost  equally  high  tension  of  his 
central  comedies  (for  peace  hath  her  victories  no 
less  renowned  than  war,  and  no  less  laboriously 
won)  has  given  way  to  a  freer,  looser,  more  fanciful 
handling,  to  which  is  added  the  careless  ease,  the 
effortless  power,  of  a  dramatist  who  has  long  ago 
mastered  his  art,  and  can  play  with  it  lightly.  So  it 


20  CHAUCER 

is  with  Chaucer ;  and  with  him  also,  as  with  Shake- 
speare, there  comes  in  towards  the  end  the  note  of 
simple  seriousness,  the  spirit  of  piety,  which  others 
besides  Burke  have  remarked  as  deeply  ingrained  in 
the  English  nature. 

Those  years  of  tense  concentration  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  central  movement  of  European  poetry 
left  Chaucer  master  of  his  art.  Good  workmanship 
was  not  rare  in  the  English  poetry  of  the  fourteenth 
century ;  it  could  hardly  be  that  where  the  other 
arts  had  reached  such  high  perfection,  this  one,  as 
assiduously  studied  as  any,  should  fail  to  reach  a 
high  level.  But  the  step  from  good  workmanship 
to  consummate  art  was  taken  by  Chaucer  alone. 
Gower  shows  how  far  poetry  can  go  without  that 
step.  He  was  a  good  scholar  according  to  the  cri- 
terion of  his  time,  and  a  poet  of  high  technical  skill; 
but  when  all  has  been  said  in  his  praise  that  can  be 
said,  it  remains  true  that  he  is  a  dead  author.  An- 
other instance  is  the  unknown  author  of  the  Flower 
and  the  Leaf,  the  attribution  of  which  to  Chaucer 
was  long  accepted  without  question.  It  stands  to 
him  in  much  the  same  relation  as  the  Ciris  does  to 
the  authentic  work  of  Virgil.  The  authorship  of 
that  piece  was  until  lately  a  point  on  which  scholars 
suspended  their  judgment  between  two  theories,  both 
of  which  presented  serious  difficulties,  that  it  was  by 
Virgil,  and  that  it  was  by  a  later  poet  imitating  Virgil. 
It  has  now  been  established,  with  a  degree  of  proba- 


THE   CHAUCERIANS  21 

bility  that  approaches  certainty,  that  it  is  neither,  but 
is  by  a  slightly  older  poet  belonging  to  the  Virgilian 
circle,  and  one  whose  influence  over  Virgil's  develop- 
ment was  very  great.  Coincidences  of  phrase  be- 
tween the  work  of  a  great  and  that  of  a  lesser  poet 
do  not  necessarily  mean  that  the  inferior  artist  copied 
from  the  master;  it  is  quite  as  likely  to  be  the  other 
way,  and  this  is  so  more  especially  where  the  great 
poet  has  a  passion  for  style  and  is  sensitive  to  effects 
of  language  down  to  his  finger-tips.  It  was  thus 
that  Virgil  stole  from  Varro  Atacinus  and  Cornelius 
Gallus  as  freely  as  he  did  from  Naevius  or  Ennius. 
It  may  very  well  have  been  thus  with  the  Flower  and 
the  Leaf  ;  and  the  passage  in  the  Legend  of  Good 
Women,  which  is  generally  regarded  as  having  sug- 
gested that  poem,  may  be  in  fact  suggested  by  it. 

For  what  he  borrowed  without  acknowledgment, 
Chaucer  had  to  pay  a  heavy  penalty  in  the  inclusion 
among  his  own  work  of  many  pieces  by  his  imitators. 
Except  for  the  Cuckow  and  the  Nightingale,  that  sweet 
innocent  poem  to  which,  alone  out  of  the  work  of 
all  his  pupils,  Chaucer  might  gladly  have  set  his 
name,  the  record  of  the  Chaucerians  is  one  of  de- 
cadence and  incompetence.  After  Gower,  the  descent 
is  swift.  Only  the  Scottish  school  preserve  what  life 
was  left  in  that  tradition,  and  even  in  them  it  is  but 
feeble.  The  King's  Quhair,  with  all  its  sincerity  and 
simplicity,  is  after  all  no  more  than  the  imitative  work 
of  an  amateur.  Henryson  has  but  a  derivative  and 


22  CHAUCER 

reflected  poetic  gift ;  the  Testament  of  Creseid,  with 
its  cheap  sentiment,  its  awkward  movement  and 
staggering  metre,  falls  as  far  below  the  Book  of 
Troilus  and  Creseide  in  technical  workmanship  as  it 
does  in  imaginative  insight.  Dunbar  and  his  con- 
temporaries, a  hundred  years  after  Chaucer,  belong 
to  a  new  epoch.  In  them  there  is  a  new  quality  of 
high  interest  and  value ;  but  the  mediaeval  tradition 
has  ceased  to  exist  as  completely  as  it  had  ceased  to 
exist  in  the  debased  English  work  of  the  same  period. 
In  the  Court  of  Love,  which  till  recently  was  still 
allowed  to  stand  among  and  to  contaminate  the 
poems  of  Chaucer,  the  Chaucerian  manner  in  poetry 
undergoes  its  last  degradation  before  being  finally 
swept  away. 

In  the  case  of  Shakespeare,  also,  the  attribution  is 
uncertain  of  much  work  that  does,  and  of  some  that 
does  not,  currently  pass  under  his  name.  In  any 
period  of  really  living  art,  the  individual  artist  is  as 
it  were  the  nucleus  of  a  productive  activity  that 
extends  beyond  him,  and  of  which  he  is  himself 
partly  the  origin  and  partly  the  focus.  It  is  perhaps 
only  an  apparent  paradox  to  say  that  the  greatest 
poetry  may  bear  the  least  mark  of  a  personality 
behind  it.  But  the  whole  of  Chaucer's  work,  if  we 
exclude  mere  translations,  carries  on  it  the  signature 
not  only  of  a  certain  technical  quality,  but  of  his 
own  personality.  This  is  so,  likewise,  with  a  few 
poets  of  the  highest  rank ;  it  is  so  with  Dante ;  it  is 


CHAUCER   AND   BOCCACCIO          23 

so  with  Milton.  But  in  them  the  absence  of  a 
certain  breadth  and  universality  has  its  compensa- 
tion in  an  imaginative  ardour  and  moral  passion  so 
intense  that  the  personal  quality  of  the  poetry  be- 
comes almost  like  a  great  natural  force.  Chaucer 
had  not  this  ardour  and  intensity.  In  the  largeness 
of  his  range,  in  his  breadth  of  sympathetic  portraiture, 
he  is  next  among  our  poets  to  Shakespeare.  Like 
Shakespeare  he  portrayed  the  whole  surface  and  aspect 
of  life  ;  omnem  vitae  imaginem  expressit^  we  may  say  of 
him  in  the  phrase  of  Quintilian.  But  Shakespeare 
also  saw  and  felt  deep  down  into  its  inner  springs. 
Chaucer's  insight  is  more  external  and  superficial. 
Like  a  child  in  his  clear-eyed  receptiveness,  his  quick 
responsiveness  to  outward  influences,  he  is  like  a 
child  also  in  bearing  no  grudge  against  things.  "  I 
am  so  weary  for  to  speak  of  sorwe,"  he  says,  and 
passes  on,  where  another — where  Shakespeare  even 
— would  have  grown  embittered  and  angry.  He 
never  frets.  What  he  has  instead  of  high  moral 
passion  is  another  quality  as  rare  and  as  precious, 
that  of  mercy.  This  is  what  separates  him  sharply 
from  the  type  of  artistic  intelligence — clear,  masterly, 
a  little  pitiless — represented  by  Boccaccio  and  fully 
developed  by  the  Italian  Renaissance. 

The  heartlessness  of  the  Decameron  is  a  common- 
place of  criticism.  But  criticism,  as  so  often  happens, 
has  gone  right  by  a  sort  of  sound  instinct  where  its 
reasoned  grounds  were  wrong,  or  at  least  inadequate. 


24  CHAUCER 

It  has  fastened  on  a  mere  accident,  though  a  significant 
one,  the  way  in  which  the  great  plague  at  Florence 
is  made  the  background  for  the  tales.  Yet  to  a 
serious  view  of  life  the  incidents  of  the  plague  are 
not  more  piteous  or  more  tragic  than  what  passes 
before  our  eyes  every  day :  if  this  does  not  stir  us, 
we  shall  not  be  stirred  vitally  by  anything.  The 
quality  of  heartlessness  affects  the  whole  book,  and 
the  whole  of  Boccaccio's  work.  He  shares  it  with 
or  inherits  it  from  Ovid.  It  is  consistent  with  the 
highest  gifts  of  the  story-teller,  but  not  with  the 
highest  gifts  of  the  poet.  Chaucer,  working  with 
a  less  highly  educated  intellect  in  more  difficult 
material,  brought  into  his  work  that  quality  of  heart 
which  not  only  vitalised  its  spirit,  but  reacted  on  its 
artistic  structure. 

"  Chaucer,"  says  Mr.  Ker,  to  whose  critical  ap- 
preciation of  the  two  writers  I  cannot  express  my 
obligation  too  fully,  "  learned  from  Boccaccio  the 
intuition  of  the  right  lines  of  a  story."  So  far  as 
intuition  can  be  learned,  this  was  so.  But  it  was 
from  his  own  instinct  that  he  learned  to  modify  or 
transgress  these  lines,  ad  maiorem  poesis  gloriam.  The 
instinct  which  led  him  to  compress  the  leseide  from 
an  epic  into  an  epic  idyl,  and  to  expand  the  Filostrato 
from  a  "libro"  into  an  "opera,"  was  an  instinct  of 
sympathy  as  well  as  intelligence,  as  rare  an  instinct 
as  the  other,  and  a  subtler  one.  It  is  one  not  only 
of  right  lines  but  of  right  values.  In  the  result,  the 


CHAUCER   AND   BOCCACCIO          25 

Knight's  Tale  and  the  Book  of  Troilus  and  Creseide 
are,  each  in  its  own  kind,  perfect.  But  if  we  look 
for  the  reason,  we  shall  see  that  the  artistic  difference 
is  based  on  one  which  is  profoundly  moral.  It  is  a 
matter  of  heart  as  well  as  of  head. 

The  Teseide  was  the  first  Italian  epic ;  and  if  we 
set  aside  the  one  fault  in  its  design,  that  the  subject 
does  not  bear  large  epic  treatment,  Boccaccio's  hand- 
ling of  it  compels  our  respect  and  our  admiration. 
Only,  that  fault  refuses  to  be  set  aside.  In  this  in- 
stance Chaucer's  instinct  is  surer  than  Boccaccio's  ; 
surer  even  than  Shakespeare's  always  was,  if  the 
scenes  in  the  Two  Noble  Kinsmen  which  come  from 
Shakespeare's  hand  were  meant  for  the  substance 
not  of  a  masque  but  of  a  drama.  For  the  play  as 
it  stands  Shakespeare  of  course  cannot  be  held  re- 
sponsible ;  and  what  he  might  have  done  with  it  we 
cannot  dream.  What  Boccaccio  in  fact  did,  shows 
that  failure  of  perception  which  comes  of  the  brain 
working  without  the  heart.  His  ambition,  no  un- 
worthy one,  was  to  elevate  narrative  poetry  from  the 
scope  of  the  conte  and  fabliau.  But  the  story  which 
he  would  have  told  enchantingly  as  a  fabulist  had 
to  be  expanded  beyond  what  it  would  bear  to  pass 
as  an  epic ;  it  has  not  the  epic  life-blood.  The 
Teseide  is  loaded  with  machinery,  partly  because  the 
dignity  of  the  epic  was  supposed  to  require  that, 
partly  for  a  simpler  reason,  to  fill  it  out  to  the 
proper  epic  size.  Not  only  has  it  the  orthodox 


26  CHAUCER 

twelve  books  prescribed  by  the  example  of  Virgil 
and  Statius,  but  it  contains — I  do  not  know  whether 
this  has  been  noticed  before  or  not — exactly  the 
same  number  of  lines  as  the  Aeneid,  9896  lines  in 
each  case.  This  may  be  merely  a  very  remarkable 
coincidence ;  it  is  perhaps  more  likely  that  it  is  one 
of  those  elaborate  arithmetical  artifices  which  were 
dear  to  the  mediaeval  mind,  and  particularly,  as  all 
students  of  Dante  know,  to  the  great  Florentine 
who  was  Boccaccio's  master  in  the  art  of  poetry.  In 
any  case,  given  the  subject,  this  one  fact  is  the  con- 
demnation of  the  poem.  Chaucer,  when  he  cut  it 
down  to  a  fourth  of  the  length  and  reduced  it  to 
its  proper  scope  of  a  tale,  left  it  still  dangerously 
long,  and  only  kept  together  by  great  brilliance  of 
execution  and  richness  of  workmanship.  Palamon 
and  Arcite  is  written  in  a  more  full  and  heightened 
style  than  any  other  of  his  narrative  poems.  The 
ornament  is  so  rich  that  it  requires  all  the  speed  and 
elasticity  of  his  verse  to  keep  it  from  the  effect  of 
overloading.  It  was  a  dangerous  experiment,  which 
he  just  succeeded  in  bringing  to  a  triumphant  con- 
clusion. But  he  saw,  with  the  instinct  of  a  great 
poet,  that  the  epic  treatment  required  a  larger  scope, 
a  more  dramatic  movement,  a  profounder  human 
interest. 

These  things  he  found  in  the  subject  of  Boc- 
caccio's other  poem ;  and  into  it  he  put  his  full 
powers.  The  Filostrato  is  lucidly  told,  gracefully 


TROILUS   AND   CRESEIDE  27 

constructed,  charmingly  written ;  but  the  poem  that 
Chaucer  made  out  of  it  is  a  consummate  master- 
piece. The  Book  of  Troilus  and  Creseide  is  one  of  the 
few  large  perfect  things  in  our  literature.  This  does 
not  mean  that  it  is  a  greater  poem,  or  even  a  greater 
work  of  art,  than  others  which  have  not  this  quality. 
It  is  a  character  it  shares  with  Romeo  and  Juliet  or 
Much  Ado,  and  not  with  Cymbeline  or  Lear. 

Not  only  so,  but  with  the  epic  largeness  Chaucer 
has  reached  in  it  the  epic  truth  to  life.  Palamon 
and  Arcite  is  like  a  rich  tapestry ;  the  figures  in  it 
are  part  of  the  decoration.  They  seem  to  move 
and  speak  faintly,  as  if  through  a  veil  where 

— in  a  cool  green  room  all  day 
I  gazed  upon  the  arras  giddily 

Where  the  wind  set  the  silken  kings  asway. 

In  Troilus  they  breathe  and  live.  This  is  true  not 
only  of  the  two  principal  characters,  but  of  all ; 
of  Pandarus,  Deiphobus,  Diomede,  Helen,  even  the 
slight  figure  of  Antigone.  Nothing  in  modern  crea- 
tive work  is  more  subtly  delicate  in  its  psychology. 

For  out  of  olde  fieldes,  as  men  saith, 
Cometh  all  this  new  corn  fro  year  to  year. 

Of  Cressida,  alone  among  the  women  of  English 
poetry  before  Shakespeare,  it  may  be  said  in  the 
full  sense  without  reservation  that  she  is  like  one 
of  Shakespeare's  women.  And  even  among  Shake- 
speare's women  it  would  be  hard  to  name  one 


28  CHAUCER 

whom,  like  Chaucer's  Cressida,  we  understand  and 
love  through  her  very  weakness  and  inconstancy ; 
so  that  the  heart-broken  and  heart-breaking  words 
of  Troilus,  when  the  end  has  come,  do  not  sound 
enfeebled  or  anything  but  inevitable — 

Clean  out  of  your  mind 
Ye  han  me  cast,  and  I  ne  can  nor  may 
For  all  this  world  within  mine  herte  find 
To  unloven  you  a  quarter  of  a  day. 

The  type  was  one  which  Shakespeare,  whether  by 
choice  or  chance,  never  treated.  There  are  hints 
of  it  in  Ophelia,  who  might  have  developed  into 
something  like  Cressida  had  she  lived  longer.  It 
is  curious  to  note  that  it  is  not  from  Chaucer's 
Cressida,  but  from  Chaucer's  Cleopatra  that  Shake- 
speare took  that  single  phrase  "  O  rose  of  May ! " 
which  is  the  real  epitaph  on  Ophelia.  Of  Shake- 
speare's own  Cressida  one  can  only  say  that,  like 
the  whole  drama  to  which  she  gives  her  name,  she 
is  profoundly  disagreeable,  and  that  she  is  presented 
with  frightful  insight,  but  (except  for  one  single 
phrase  put  in  the  soiled  lips  of  Pandarus)  without  a 
touch  of  sympathy  or  mercy.  Perhaps  the  nearest 
likeness  to  Chaucer's  Cressida  is  to  be  found  in  some 
of  Mr.  Hardy's  frail,  passive,  wild-rose-blossom 
women,  who,  like  her,  without  passion  or  strength 
or  constancy,  have  but  one  power,  to  hold  and 
break  the  hearts  of  men. 

To  compare,  point  by  point,  Boccaccio's  original 


TROILUS  AND   CRESEIDE  29 

with  Chaucer's  copy — so  far  as  it  is  a  copy — would 
be  a  lesson  in  the  art  of  poetry.  The  changes  are 
not  uniformly  for  the  better ;  but  they  are  seldom 
without  good  poetical  reason.  There  are  some 
touches  in  the  Filostrato  that  we  might  think 
specifically  Chaucerian  which  Chaucer  has  passed 
by.  The  gathering  of  the  Trojan  princesses  to 
comfort  Troilus,  given  by  Boccaccio  in  two  stanzas 
of  extreme  beauty  (vii.  84  and  85)  makes  a  pic- 
ture just  such  as  Chaucer  loves,  executed  in  what 
is  just  his  manner. 

In  poca  d'ora  la  camera  piena 
Di  donne  fu,  e  di  suoni  e  di  canti  ; 
Dall'una  parte  gli  era  Polissena 
Ch'un'angela  pareva  ne'sembianti ; 
Dall'altra  gli  sedea  la  bella  Elena, 
Cassandra  ancora  gli  stava  davanti ; 
Ecuba  v'era,  e  Andromaca,  e  molte 
Di  lui  cognate  e  parenti  raccolte. 

Ciascuna  a  suo  potere  il  confortava, 
E  tale  il  domandava  che  sentia. 
Esso  non  rispondea,  ma  riguardava 
Or  1'una  or  1'altra,  e  nella  mente  pia 
Di  Griseida  sua  si  ricordava, 
Ne  piu  che  con  sospir  cio  discopria  ; 
E  pur  sentiva  alquanto  di  dolcezza 
E  per  li  suoni  e  per  la  lor  bellezza. 

Yet  Chaucer  leaves  out  the  episode  altogether ;  and 
he  is  right ;  the  tragedy  has  by  this  time  gone 
beyond  the  sphere  of  romantic  sensibility,  and 
Chaucer's  Muse,  rising  to  the  amplitude  of  the  sub- 


30  CHAUCER 

ject,  has  passed  beyond  the  "  camera  plena  di  donne 
e  di  suoni  e  di  canti "  in  which  it  loved  to  dwell. 
On  the  other  hand  Chaucer  puts  in,  of  his  own  in- 
vention, the  whole  of  that  splendidly  handled  scene  of 
Helen  and  Cressida  dining  in  the  house  of  Deipho- 
bus,  and  their  visit  to  Troilus.  It  is  here  that  we 
have  one  of  the  most  wonderful  of  Chaucer's  crea- 
tions— his  Helen.  She  is  the  Helen  of  the  Odyssey 
reincarnate,  "  once  and  only  once  and  for  one  only  "  : 
one  out  of  whom  came  a  fire  to  devour  many, 
yet  on  whom  the  fire  could  not  take  hold  even  to 
scorch  her  raiment.  She  moves  through  the  poem 
with  placid  sweetness,  in  a  strange  radiance.  She 
lifts  the  story  into  a  new  beauty  when  she  appears ; 
as  she  sits  at  the  table  of  Deiphobus  holding  Cres- 
sida's  hand  in  hers,  or  as  she  goes  to  visit  Troilus  on 
his  sick-bed  and  to  comfort  him,  "  in  all  her  goodly 
softe  wise,"  laying  her  arm  over  his  shoulder  like  a 
kind  sister.  When  she  kisses  him  and  leaves  him 
quietly  to  go  to  sleep,  she  has  her  Odyssean  charm 
of  affectionate  tact  and  exquisite  manners.  Yet, 
like  the  Helen  of  the  Iliad ^  she  is  doomed  to  bring 
unhappiness  where  she  goes.  It  is  a  subtle  imagi- 
native touch  that  the  ill-starred  love  of  Troilus  is 
helped  on  by  her  kindly,  well-meant  intervention. 

Good  thrift  have  ye,  quod  Eleyne  the  queen. 

The  words,  and  the  feeling  behind  them,  are  those, 
as  Troilus  says,  of  a  "  sister  lief  and  dear,"  but  a 
fate  for  which  she  is  not  responsible  reverses  them. 


TROILUS   AND   CRESEIDE  31 

Of  Chaucer's  own  invention  too  is  the  scene, 
which  is  perhaps  the  climax  of  the  whole  achieve- 
ment, the  riding  of  the  knights  up  the  street  of  Troy 
before  Cressida's  window.  This  has  been  praised 
once,  and  so  that  it  need  not  be  praised  a  second 
time. 

O  Master,  pardon  me  if  yet  in  vain 
Thou  art  my  Master,  and  I  fail  to  bring 
Before  men's  eyes  the  image  of  the  thing 
My  heart  is  filled  with  :  thou  whose  dreamy  eyes 
Beheld  the  flush  to  Cressid's  cheeks  arise 
When  Troilus  rode  up  the  praising  street, 
As  clearly  as  they  saw  thy  townsmen  meet 
Those  who  in  vineyards  of  Poictou  withstood 
The  glittering  horror  of  the  steel-topped  wood. 

The  scene  is  indeed  suggested  by  a  few  casual  lines 
which  the  curious  may  find  in  the  seventy-second  and 
seventy-third  stanzas  of  the  second  part  of  the  Filo- 
strato;  but  seldom  has  so  magnificent  a  flower  sprung 
out  of  so  slight  a  bud.  Seldom,  one  may  add,  has 
one  of  the  supreme  scenes  of  poetry  been  so  strangely 
and  so  cruelly  trailed  through  the  mire  as  this  was 
by  Shakespeare  when  he  wrote  the  second  scene  of 
the  first  act  of  Troilus  and  Cressida. 

In  smaller  points  there  are  similar  discrepancies 
often  illuminating,  sometimes  perplexing.     Why,  in 
the  first  description  of  Cressida,  did  Chaucer  ignore 
the  beautiful  phrase  of  the  Italian — 

La  qual,  quanto  la  rosa  la  viola 
Di  belta  vince,  cotanto  era  questa 
Piil  ch'altra  donna  bella — 


32  CHAUCER 

to  substitute  a  piece  of  what  looks  at  first  sight 
either  childish  quaintness  or  malicious  humour — 

Right  as  our  firste  letter  is  now  an  A 
In  beauty  first  so  stood  she  makeless — 

lines  which  would  not  surprise  one  in  his  own 
juvenile  work,  but  which  rather  suggest  the  scholar- 
ship and  taste  of  the  Wife  of  Bath  ?  The  explana- 
tion seems  to  be  that  here,  as  again  and  more 
legitimately  in  his  description  of  the  jewel  worn  by 
the  Prioress  of  the  Canterbury  Tales,  he  went  out  of 
his  way  to  pay  a  compliment  to  Queen  Anne.  The 
adroit  courtliness  of  the  touch  may  excuse  its  irrele- 
vance. Why,  again,  in  the  speech  where  Cressida, 
with  a  faint  effort  at  constancy,  puts  by  the  first 
overtures  of  Diomede,  did  he  omit  the  most  subtly 
dramatic  touch  in  his  original — 

a  te  Elena  bella 
Si  converria  ? 

Why,  except  in  order  to  annoy,  or  to  throw  a  tinge 
of  comedy  over  the  whole  situation  which  he  felt 
and  imagined  with  such  tragic  intensity,  does  he  say 
of  Cressida — 

But  whether  that  she  children  had  or  none 
I  read  it  nought — 

when  he  did  read  it,  in  so  many  words,  that  she 
had  none  ? 

A  hundred  instances  might  be  given  of  the  way 
in  which  Chaucer  remodels  the  story,  most  often  by 


TROILUS   AND   CRESE1DE  33 

thinking  intensely  over  it  and  re-embodying  it  in  his 
own  imagination.  But  it  is  at  the  end  that  the 
essential  difference  between  the  two  poets  and  the 
two  poems  comes  out.  Boccaccio  treats  the  tragedy 
as  lightly  and  as  carelessly  as  Ovid  might  have  done. 
With  Chaucer  all  other  feelings  are  swallowed  up  in 
a  passion  of  pity.  Of  that  miraculous  ending  one 
can  hardly  trust  oneself  to  speak.  The  thrill  of 
tears  is  in  the  verses.  Yet  through  his  passion  of 
pity  the  poet  keeps  a  certain  and  mastering  hand. 
I  need  hardly  quote  the  splendid  apostrophe  of 
Troilus  to  the  empty  house  of  Cressida  as  he  rides 
by  it  once  more  and  for  the  last  time,  the  famous 
verses  beginning  "  O  palace  desolate,  O  house  of 
houses."  But  even  beyond  its  stately  beauty  is  the 
piteous  simplicity  of  his  words  as  he  broods  over 
his  wrecked  life — 

Men  might  a  book  make  of  it  like  a  story  ; 

and,  as  the  seawind  comes  up  to  Troy  in  the  moonlit 
night  from  the  Greek  camp  on  the  shore, 

Feel  I  no  wind  that  souneth  so  like  pain  : 
It  saith,  Alas,  why  twined  be  we  twain  ? 

and  when 

Another  time  imaginen  he  wold 
That  every  wight  that  wente  by  the  way 
Had  of  him  ruth,  and  that  they  sayen  shold, 
1  am  right  sorry  Troi/us  will  die. 


34  CHAUCER 

The  grief  is  so  poignant  that  it  ceases  to  care  for 
expression ;  it  becomes  hushed  and  almost  inarticu- 
late. O  vos  omnes  qui  transitis  -per  viam,  attendite  et 
videte  si  est  dolor  sicut  dolor  meus  ! 

At  the  end  of  the  poem  the  poetry  has  reached 
such  a  height  and  tension  that  the  whole  action  is 
transfigured.  Even  Diomede  and  Pandarus  speak 
with  a  new  accent :  the  one,  to  give,  in  four  lines, 
the  feeling  of  a  vast  background,  that  of  the  tragedy 
of  Troy  itself,  against  which  the  tragedy  of  the  lovers 
stands  out  in  fire — 

The  folk  of  Troy,  as  who  saith  all  and  some, 
In  prison  been,  as  ye  yourselven  see  ; 
For  thennes  shall  not  one  on  live  come 
For  all  the  gold  betwixen  sun  and  sea  : 

the  other,  awed  for  once  into  seriousness,  to  "  think 
in  his  heart "  and  "  say  to  himself  full  soberly," 
"  Yea,  farewell  all  the  snow  of  feme  year."  The 
words  on  the  lips  of  a  later  poet  became  the  burden 
of  the  world-famous  Ballad  of  Dead  Ladies ;  but  they 
were  Chaucer's  first. 

But  the  last  note  of  all  is  not  that  of  sorrow ;  still 
less,  as  in  Shakespeare's  play,  of  gloom,  a  horror  of 
darkness,  a  cry  of  disillusion  and  disbelief.  It  is  an 
uplifting  of  the  heart  in  a  strange  exaltation. 

And  when  that  he  was  slain  in  this  manere 

His  lighte  ghost  full  blissfully  is  went 

Up  to  the  hollowness  of  the  seventh  sphere  .  .  . 


TROILUS   AND   CRESEIDE  35 

And  down  from  thennes  fast  he  gan  avise 

This  little  spot  of  earth,  that  with  the  sea 

Embraced  i§,  and  fully  gan  despise 

This  wretched  world,  and  held  all  vanity 

To  respect  of  the  plem  felicity 

That  is  in  heaven  above  ;  and  at  the  last, 

There  he  was  slain,  his  looking  down  he  cast : 

And  in  himself  he  lough,  right  at  the  woe 
Of  them  that  wepten  for  his  death  so  fast. 

That  inward  laughter  had  no  bitterness.  And  it  is 
with  no  bitterness  that  Chaucer  parts  from  Cressida. 

Such  fine  hath,  lo  !  this  Troilus  for  love, 
Such  fine  hath  all  his  greate  worthiness  j 
Such  fine  hath  his  estate  royal  above ; 
Such  fine  his  lust,  such  fine  hath  his  nobless  ; 
Such  fine  hath  false  worldes  brittleness  : 
And  thus  began  his  loving  of  Creseide 
As  I  have  told,  and  in  this  wise  he  died. 

The  lovely  stanza  follows  Boccaccio's  Italian  closely  ; 
but  its  grave  sweetness  is  all  Chaucer's  own  :  and  at 
the  end  there  is  a  significant  variation  from  the 
original. 

Cotal  fine  ebbe  il  mal  concetto  amore 
Di  Troilo  in  Griseida,  e  cotale 
Fin'ebbe  il  miserabile  dolore 
Di  lui,  al  qual  non  fu  mai  altro  eguale  ; 
Cotal  fin'ebbe  il  lucido  splendore 
Che  lui  servava  al  solio  reale  : 
Cotal  fin'ebbe  la  speranza  vana 
Di  Troilo  in  Griseida  villana. 

Villana  is  an  ugly  word  ;  one  cannot  call  it  unde- 
served, and  it  is  not  cruel  and  shocking  like  the 


36  CHAUCER 

terms  that  Shakespeare  allows  himself  to  utter 
through  the  mouth  of  Thersites.  But  it  was  a 
word  that  Chaucer  could  not  bring  himself  to  say 
or  even  to  think.  To  him  Cressida  was  not  a  "ria 
donna,"  a  bad  woman.  His  epithet  is  different. 

Ne  me  ne  list  this  silly  woman  chide 
Further  than  the  story  will  devise. 
Her  name,  alas,  is  published  so  wide 
That  for  her  guilt  it  ought  enow  suffise. 
And  if  I  might  excuse  her  any  wise, 
For  she  so  sorry  was  for  her  untruth, 
Ywis,  I  wold  excuse  her  yet  for  ruth. 

The  difference  is  as  great  in  the  lines  that  follow. 
In  the  Filostrato  they  are  an  exhortation,  such  as  a 
man  of  the  world  would  give,  to  young  men  not  to 
trust  women. 

0  giovanetti,  ne'quai  coll'etate 
Surgendo  vien  I'amoroso  disio, 

Per  Dio  vi  prego  che  voi  raffreniate 

1  pronti  passi  all'  appetito  rio 

E  nell'  amor  di  Troilo  vi  specchiate 
II  qual  dimostra  suso  il  verso  mio, 
Perche  se  ben  col  cuor  gli  leggerete, 
Non  di  leggieri  a  tutte  crederete. 

Giovane  donna  e  mobile,  e  vogliosa 
£  negli  amanti  molti,  e  sua  bellezza 
Estima  piu  ch1  allo  specchio,  e  pomposa 
Ha  vanagloria  di  sua  giovinezza, 
La  qual,  quanto  piacevole  e  vezzosa 
E  piu,  cotanto  piu  seco  1'  apprezza ; 
Virtu  non  sente  ne  conoscimento, 
Volubil  sempre  come  foglia  al  vento. 


TROILUS  AND   CRESEIDE  37 

La  donna  e  mobile :  it  is  the  well-worn  refrain  of  a 
thousand  verse-writers.  Chaucer's  sweet  grave  pity 
lifts  him  into  a  wholly  different  sphere. 

O  younge  freshe  folkes,  he  or  she, 

In  which  that  love  upgroweth  with  your  age — 

the  criticism  of  life  given  by  this  alteration  is  as 
much  higher  than  Boccaccio's  as  the  liquid  beauty 
of  the  verse  excels  the  smooth  glitter  of  the  Italian. 
While  he  still  lingers  over  Cressida,  his  heart  turns 
to  Alcestis;  and  not  to  her  only,  but  to  women 
who  were  as  unhappy  as  Cressida,  and  more  sinned 
against. 

Ne  I  say  not  this  all  only  for  these  men, 
But  most  for  women  that  betrayed  be. 

To  parallel  this  passion  of  pity  one  has  to  turn 
to  the  Francesca  episode  in  Dante.  That  is  even 
greater,  more  concentrated,  more  astounding.  But 
the  pity  that  wrung  iron  tears  from  Dante,  and 
made  Hell  grant  what  love  did  seek,  wells  out  of 
Chaucer  spontaneously  :  it  is  the  climax  of  that 
tenderness  and  sweetness  that  make  him,  not  indeed 
greatest  in  the  kingdom  of  our  poetry,  but  best 
loved,  because  most  loving. 


II 

WE  have  seen  how  at  the  end  of  the  Book  of 
Troilus — the  poem  which  sets  him  definitely  among 
the  classics — Chaucer's  genius  so  kindles  and  con- 
centrates as  to  bring  him  into  touch  with  Dante. 
It  is  a  singular  confirmation  of  this,  that  we  find 
him  almost  immediately  afterwards,  for  the  first 
and  last  time,  studying  Dante  with  great  care  and 
obviously  coming  under  the  influence  of  his  poetical 
style  and  manner.  In  one  of  the  concluding  stanzas 
of  Troilusy  he  prays  that  he  may  have  might  given 
him  of  God  his  Maker,  before  he  dies,  "  to  make 
some  comedy."  The  sense  in  which  he  uses  the 
term  is  not  certain ;  but  it  is  clear  from  his  words 
that  he  meant  something  of  ampler  scope  as  well 
as  happier  import.  He  must  have  known  perfectly 
well,  for  all  his  deprecatory  phrases  about  his  "  little 
book,"  that  in  Troilus  he  had  written  a  poem  that 
went  far  beyond  Boccaccio's  range ;  and  one  can 
fancy  him  thinking  almost  in  Browning's  exact 
words — 

Still,  what  if  I  approach  the  august  sphere 
Named  now  with  only  one  name,  disentwine 
That  under-current  soft  and  argentine 
From  its  fierce  mate  in  the  majestic  mass 

38 


THE   HOUSE   OF   FAME  39 

Leavened  as  the  sea  whose  fire  was  mixed  with  glass 

In  John's  transcendent  vision, — launch  once  more 

That  lustre  ?     Dante,  pacer  of  the  shore 

Where  glutted  hell  disgorgeth  filthiest  gloom, 

Unbitten  by  its  whirring  sulphur-spume — 

Or  whence  the  grieved  and  obscure  waters  slope 

Into  a  darkness  quieted  by  hope  ; 

Plucker  of  amaranths  grown  beneath  God's  eye 

In  gracious  twilights  where  his  chosen  lie — 

I  would  do  this  !     If  I  should  falter  now  ! 

Dante's  poem  was  a  Divine  Comedy.  It  was  the 
human  comedy  to  which  Chaucer  turned  later,  and 
in  which  he  produced  his  final  masterpiece.  But 
the  first  result  of  his  new  impulse  took  shape  in  the 
House  of  Fame. 

It  is  generally  recognised  that  the  House  of  Fame 
represents  a  reaction  from  high  tension,  that  we  see 
in  it  the  artist  amusing  himself  after  his  day's  work. 
What  has  not  been  so  much  emphasised  is  that 
we  have  in  it  the  reaction  not  only  from  Iroilus 
and  Creseide,  but  from  an  attempt,  or  at  least  an 
impulse  and  intention,  to  continue  and  heighten 
his  work  on  the  great  classic  lines.  When  he  felt 
this  beyond  him,  or  at  all  events  not  in  the  direc- 
tion of  his  proper  genius,  he  poured  the  accumu- 
lated result  of  his  study  and  effort  into  a  poem 
filled  with  his  brightest  humour  and  his  most 
sensitive  feeling  for  style.  In  the  House  of  Fame 
he  is  making  fun  of  himself  and  his  poetic  aspira- 
tions with  a  brilliance  that  shows  what  progress  he 
had  made  towards  realising  them.  His  conversa- 


40  CHAUCER 

tion  with  the  eagle  is  on  one  side  pure  farce,  so 
exquisitely  done  that  it  becomes  high  art ;  but  it 
has  its  serious  side,  and  anticipates  all  that  can  be 
said  of  his  own  serious  poetry  in  the  way  of  adverse 
criticism.  It  is  not  possible  to  confuse  it  with  his 
earlier  work,  the  poetry  he  wrote  before  he  had 
come  under  the  classic  influence.  The  difference 
is  even  emphasised  by  his  reversion  in  the  House 
of  Fame  to  the  French  octosyllabic  couplet.  The 
metre  is  the  same,  but  the  rhythm  and  tone  are 
new.  The  most  striking  single  instance  is  in  the 
lines  which  conclude  the  first  book — 

It  was  of  gold,  and  shone  so  bright 

That  never  saw  men  such  a  sight 

But  if  the  heaven  had  ywon 

All  new  of  gold  another  sun  ; 

So  shone  the  eagle's  feathers  bright : 

And  somewhat  downward  gan  it  light. 

They  have  outgrown  the  old  sweet  fluidity  ;  they 
have  a  new  accent,  a  weight  and  sharpness  like  that 
of  forged  metal.  In  this,  and  in  a  certain  quality 
of  rhythm,  as  well  as  in  the  more  obvious  similarity 
of  the  incident,  we  may  see  clear  traces  of  Chaucer's 
having  read,  not  long  before  that  midwinter  night, 
as  only  one  poet  reads  another,  the  ninth  canto  of 
the  Pur  gator  io. 

The  commentators  have  noted  that  there  is  more 
of  direct  reference  to  or  imitation  of  Dante  in  the 
House  of  Fame  than  in  all  the  rest  of  Chaucer's 


THE   HOUSE   OF   FAME  41 

work  put  together.  But  in  enumerating  the  coin- 
cidences of  language  (some  of  them  either  trifling 
or  unconvincing)  they  have  perhaps  neglected  those 
subtler  affinities  of  rhythm  and  style  which  are  of 
the  inner  essence  of  poetry.  There  is  a  notable  one 
in  this  very  passage.  The  detached  last  line,  like 
a  single  stroke  upon  a  bell,  "  and  somewhat  down- 
ward gan  it  light,"  following  on  a  completed  period 
and  beginning  with  the  word  and^  is  a  peculiar 
feature  of  Dante's  style.  No  less  than  twelve 
cantos  of  the  Inferno  end  thus.  Final  lines  like 

E  caddi  come  corpo  morto  cade, 
or 

E  vengo  in  parte  ove  non  e  che  luca, 

might  readily  be  cited  in  large  numbers  ;  but  it  is 
needless  to  multiply  instances. 

The  House  of  Fame  is  unique  among  Chaucer's 
poems  in  being  a  winter's  tale — yeii*.epivo<;  oveipos  ore 
iJLYiKKTTai  at  vvKres — while  elsewhere  he  sets  his  fan- 
tasies in  the  surroundings  of  full  spring  or  summer, 
in  sweet-showered  April  or  on  a  "  freshe  morwe 
of  May."  This  touch  is  calculated.  In  that  poem, 
more  perhaps  than  in  any  other  work  of  Chaucer's, 
one  feels  that  (like  Shakespeare  when  he  wrote  that 
endless  and  miraculously  charming  fourth  scene  of 
the  fourth  act  of  his  Winter's  T'ale)  he  is  writing 
entirely  to  please  himself,  without  any  regard  for 
consequence  or  for  constructional  fitness.  But  in 


42  CHAUCER 

it  more  than  in  any  other  work  one  feels  also  the 
grasp  and  power  of  the  trained  artist ;  and  just 
because  he  was  a  trained  artist,  he  broke  off  the 
House  of  Fame  before  the  workmanship  over- 
weighted the  material. 

In  the  Legend  of  Good  Women  the  specific  Italian 
influence  is  passing  away.  It  is  only  felt  in  the 
persistence  of  a  larger,  freer  movement,  combined 
with  a  firmer  control  over  the  structure  of  the 
narratives.  They  contain  some  of  his  finest  work ; 
the  scale  is  justly  chosen  and  carefully  adhered  to, 
and  he  keeps  clear  of  his  besetting  weakness  of 
digression.  We  may  also  notice  that  he  is  ceasing 
to  make  those  elaborate  lists  and  minute  descrip- 
tions which  are  a  regular  feature  of  his  early 
manner.  The  handling  is  broader,  the  touch  more 
rapid.  He  has  fully  mastered  the  narrative  art 
of  which  he  was  yet  to  make  such  splendid  use. 
But  he  never  completed  this  series  of  tales  as  it 
was  planned.  He  may  have  felt  that,  with  what- 
ever dexterity  of  treatment,  it  would  result  in  some 
effect  of  monotony.  But  apart  from  any  such 
reasons,  the  larger  sphere  of  the  human  comedy  was 
opening  itself  out  before  him. 

At  what  period  the  scheme  of  the  Canterbury 
Tales  began  to  take  shape  in  Chaucer's  mind  we 
have  no  means  of  deciding.  The  Decameron  must 
have  been  known  to  him  at  least  as  early  as  the 
Teseide  and  the  Filostrato ;  what  some  editors  mean 


CHAUCER'S   COUPLET-VERSE        43 

by  saying  that  he  had  never  read  the  Decameron 
it  is  difficult  to  guess,  unless  they  are  drawing  a 
flagrantly  illogical  inference  from  the  fact  that  he 
follows,  in  certain  stories  told  by  both,  a  different 
version  from  that  of  Boccaccio.  But  it  did  not 
require  any  such  particular  example  to  suggest  the 
notion  of  a  collection  of  tales  in  verse,  of  very 
various  subject  and  treatment,  dealing  with  the 
whole  tragedy  and  comedy  (in  Plato's  phrase)  of 
human  life.  Chaucer  had  already  proved  his  own 
narrative  gift  and  his  mastery  over  the  manipula- 
tion of  verse  for  the  purpose  of  narration.  He 
had  invented  in  the  decasyllabic  couplet  a  metre 
of  complete  fitness  for  this  purpose.  It  had  doubled 
the  effectiveness  of  the  means  at  his  disposal.  It 
gave  to  verse  composition  a  flexibility  and  range 
comparable  to  that  gained  for  architecture  by  the 
introduction  of  the  pointed  arch.  The  French 
octosyllabic  couplet,  his  own  earlier  favourite,  was 
much  inferior  to  it  in  both  respects.  The  seven- 
line  stanza  so  exquisitely  used  in  Troilus  was  best 
suited  for  work  involving  no  great  or  sudden 
variation  of  key — work  that  was  large,  sustained, 
and  deliberate.  It  was  not  well  suited  for  familiar 
narrative  nor  for  quick  transitions.  But  the  new 
verse  was  capable  of  answering  any  demand  made 
on  it ;  once  its  capacities  had  been  ascertained,  the 
poets  who  had  worked  without  it  were  like  that 
people  in  the  Odyssey  who  did  not  know  the  use 


44  CHAUCER 

of  oars — ovtf  evr'jpe  eper/xa,  TO.  re  Trrepct  vrjv(r\ 
"  that  are  to  ships  as  wings  are  to  a  bird." 

In  his  earlier  period  Chaucer  had  used  many 
other  metres  than  the  eight-syllabled  couplet ;  he 
used  several  stanza-forms  for  continuous  poetry, 
besides  a  profusion  of  lyric  measures.  To  his 
central  period,  associated  mainly  with  the  rhyme- 
royal,  belongs  the  invention  and  conquest  of  the 
heroic  couplet.  Palamon  and  Arcite  may  indeed 
have  been  remodelled  later  from  an  earlier  version 
in  stanzas,  though  to  say  that  it  was  so  remodelled 
is  a  mere  assumption,  but  the  Legend  of  Good  Women 
shows  the  new  metre  in  its  perfection.  In  the 
Canterbury  Tales,  while  the  new  verse  is  immensely 
preponderant,  six  stories  are  in  other  metres.  It 
will  be  worth  while  going  into  this  point  a  little 
more  closely,  both  on  its  own  account,  and  because 
it  leads  up  to  the  larger  question — how  far  the 
whole  body  of  writing  included  in  the  Canterbury 
Tales  is  poetry,  and  what  place  that  poetry  holds  in 
Chaucer's  total  poetic  achievement. 

It  is  clear  that  the  framework  of  the  Canterbury 
Tales  was  planned  out  on  a  scale  which  allowed  the 
inclusion  of  an  enormous  mass  of  material,  and  that 
its  contents  would  be  gradually  filled  up,  in  part  by 
including  or  adapting  tales  already  written,  in  part 
by  writing  fresh  ones.  In  the  Decameron  there  are 
a  hundred  novelle ;  and  according  to  a  passage  in 
Chaucer's  prologue,  if  the  words  are  taken  in  their 


THE   CANTERBURY   TALES          45 

obvious  meaning,  the  scheme  of  the  Canterbury  Tales 
would  have  included  when  complete  no  less  than 
a  hundred  and  sixteen.  The  original  scheme  was 
perhaps  for  tales  not  exceeding  in  length  those  in  the 
Legend  of  Good  Women,  an  average  of  rather  under 
two  hundred  and  fifty  lines  apiece.  That,  in  fact,  is 
just  the  length  of  the  Prioress'  and  the  Manciple's 
Tales,  while  five  others  of  the  Canterbury  Tales  do 
not  exceed  the  length  of  the  Legend  of  Dido.  To 
write  a  hundred  or  more  stories  on  this  scale  would 
be  no  impossible  task ;  it  would  have  meant  from 
twenty-five  thousand  to  thirty  thousand  lines.  The 
actual  number  of  lines  in  the  Canterbury  Tales,  ex- 
cluding the  prose,  is  over  seventeen  thousand.  But 
at  a  very  early  stage  the  scheme  began  to  grow 
and  alter  its  whole  features ;  and  there  is  perhaps 
as  much  difference  between  the  original  design  and 
the  actual  work  produced  as  was  the  case  later  with 
Pickwick.  The  little  world  of  people  whom  Chaucer 
created  took  the  matter  into  their  own  hands.  Dry- 
den's  famous  words,  "  Here  is  God's  plenty,"  though 
they  are  generally  (in  the  careless  way  that  the  world 
has  with  famous  phrases)  applied  to  the  whole  body 
of  work  in  the  Canterbury  Talesy  were  applied  by 
him  not  to  this,  but  to  the  group  of  pilgrims  them- 
selves. They  develop  and  interact  in  a  way  which 
makes  their  talk  and  doings  on  the  road  into  a  story 
by  itself — a  story  much  longer  than  any  one,  or  even 
any  two,  of  the  stories  they  tell,  and  as  various,  as 


46  CHAUCER 

dramatic,  as  interesting.  Meanwhile  these  stories 
themselves,  or  some  of  them,  were  undergoing  a 
similar  expansion.  The  Knight's  Tale  alone  exceeds 
in  length  the  whole  nine  stories  in  the  Legend  of  Good 
Women.  The  scheme  had  to  be  completely  re- 
modelled. The  introduction  of  the  Canon  and  his 
yeoman  marks  a  point  at  which  it  had,  on  its  original 
lines,  been  quite  given  up. 

I  have,  God  wot,  a  large  field  to  ere, 
And  weake  been  the  oxen  in  my  plough. 

These  words  of  the  Knight's  Tale  apply  with  even 
greater  force  to  the  whole  design  of  the  Canterbury 
Tales.  Chaucer's  own  working-day  was  past  noon. 
Splendid  as  was  the  instrument  he  had  forged  in  the 
rhymed  couplet,  great  as  were  his  mastery  and  facility 
in  its  use,  the  sun,  in  the  Homeric  phrase,  was  de- 
scending towards  the  hour  of  unyoking  before  the 
field  was  half  covered. 

Even  as  a  man  to  supper  longs  to  go 

Whose  wine-red  oxen  all  day  long  have  drawn 

Across  the  tilth  the  plough-frame  to  and  fro  ; 

And  welcome  to  him  is  the  dusking  grey 
At  sundown,  when  to  supper  go  he  may, 
And  his  knees  ache  in  going. 

The  number  of  stories  told  is  in  fact  only  twenty- 
four,  and  these  include  two  which  are  stopped  before 


THE    CANTERBURY   TALES          47 

they  have  well  begun,  and  another  which  is  inter- 
rupted at  an  early  stage  and  never  resumed.  Two 
of  them  are  in  prose.  Of  the  remaining  twenty-two, 
sixteen,  containing  about  ten  thousand  lines,  are  in 
the  couplet-verse,  as  are  the  three  thousand  five 
hundred  lines  of  the  prologue  and  interstitial  narra- 
tive (with  one  curious  exception,  the  brief  prologue  to 
the  Rime  of  Sir  Thopas,  which  is  in  stanzas).  It  is  not 
impossible  that  the  six  tales  in  other  metres  are  pieces 
not  originally  within  the  scheme  of  the  work  at  all. 
If  so,  they  may  have  been  introduced  into  it,  partly 
perhaps  from  a  feeling  that  the  couplet-verse  if  not 
varied  might  at  last  become  monotonous,  but  partly 
also  because  they  were  already  written,  and  the  idea 
of  letting  them  be  wasted,  or  of  rewriting  them  in 
another  metre,  seemed  one  to  be  deprecated.  That 
neither  idea  was  out  of  the  question  is  shown  by  a 
modern  case  where  we  know  the  facts.  The  scheme 
of  the  Earthly  Paradise  was  planned  by  William 
Morris  with  great  care.  But  it  outgrew  the  original 
plan ;  and  while  he,  approaching  it  as  he  did  in  the 
full  vigour  of  early  manhood,  and  free  from  those 
financial  and  domestic  embarrassments  which  seem 
to  have  pursued  Chaucer  in  his  later  years,  brought 
the  altered  design  to  accomplishment,  a  number  of 
tales  which  he  had  planned  and  actually  written  never 
found  their  place  in  it.  The  Story  of  the  Golden  Fleece 
grew  into  a  separate  epic  :  other  tales  remain  still  un- 
published ;  while  the  Story  of  the  Wanderers,  which 


48  CHAUCER 

forms  a  prologue  to  the  rest,  was,  as  Professor  Skeat 
believes  to  have  been  the  case  with  Palamon  and 
Arcite^  completely  rewritten  in  a  different  form,  the 
change  here  also  being,  curiously  enough,  from  a 
stanza  into  rhymed  couplets.  It  is  another  interest- 
ing analogy,  that  in  the  Earthly  Paradise  the  story 
of  the  Lovers  of  Gudrun  occupies  a  place  as  unique 
as  that  of  Palamon  and  Arcite  in  the  Canterbury 
Tales.  Like  the  Knight's  Tale,  it  is  more  than  twice 
the  length  of  any  of  the  others,  and  it  is  also  in  a 
different,  and  in  some  respects  a  larger  and  statelier 
manner,  midway  between  the  straightforward  fluency 
of  the  fabliau  and  the  full  proud  sail  of  the  epic.  It 
is  likewise  noteworthy  that,  whatever  Chaucer  may 
have  done,  Morris  deliberately  varied  the  versifica- 
tion of  his  tales  by  including  all  of  the  three  great 
Chaucerian  metres.  To  these  three  he  confined 
himself,  except  that  he  followed  Chaucer  in  the 
use  of  inserted  lyrics. 

Chaucer's  scheme  was  more  elastic,  more  compre- 
hensive, in  treatment  as  well  as  in  substance.  While 
there  is  no  reason  to  assume  that  he  would  have 
written  many  more  tales  had  he  lived  longer,  it 
would  have  been  easy  to  add  others  when  and  as  he 
chose.  But  of  course  the  primary  difference  is  one 
of  substance.  The  subject-matter  of  the  Canterbury 
Tales  is  the  whole  of  human  life  ;  it  is  a  human 
comedy  that  includes  tragedy,  but  that  passes  lightly 
from  pathos  to  humour,  and  is  fuller  of  the  laughter 


THE   CANTERBURY   TALES          49 

than  of  the  tears  of  things.     To  the  whole  work  in 
its  mass  his  own  words  apply — 

This  is  the  way  to  all  good  aventure ; 

Be  glad  then,  reader,  and  thy  sorrow  off  cast : 

All  open  am  I :  pass  in  and  speed  thee  fast. 

The  narrators  are  a  mixed  company  of  men  and 
women,  mostly  belonging  to  the  bourgeoisie,  and  not 
conversant  with  high  thoughts  or  profound  emotions. 
Throughout  we  must  always  remember  who  it  is  that 
is  telling  the  story.  While  the  accent  of  Chaucer 
himself  is  clear  through  all  the  tales,  while  they  are 
all  informed  by  his  sweetness  of  temper,  his  humour, 
his  keen  observation  and  quick  sympathy,  each  of 
them  bears  also  the  personality  of  the  narrator  in 
whose  mouth  it  is  placed.  No  greater  triumph  of 
dramatic  art  has  been  achieved,  so  far  as  dramatic 
art  consists  in  creating  people  and  making  them  live 
and  act  from  within. 

Without  at  present  raising  the  whole  formidable 
question  of  what  poetry  is,  we  may  say  that  in  any 
case  it  must  fulfil  two  conditions  ;  that  it  was  worth 
writing  in  verse,  and  that  it  could  not  have  been 
written  but  in  verse.  The  first  condition  would 
exclude  a  great  deal  of  the  metrical  output  of 
Chaucer's  contemporaries,  and  perhaps  some  of  his 
own.  The  second  excludes  almost  nothing  that 
ranks  as  literature  during  times  earlier  than  the 
period  at  which  a  language  has  developed  the  art  of 
prose  composition.  This  in  Chaucer's  England  was 

D 


50  CHAUCER 

just  beginning  to  be  the  case,  but  only  just  be- 
ginning. Wiclif  was  founding  English  prose  ;  but 
it  is  a  long  step  from  Wiclif  to  Coverdale,  or  from 
the  so-called  Mandevile  to  Malory.  Such  prose  as 
had  been  created  for  Italy  by  Boccaccio,  supple, 
succinct,  lucid,  was  not  yet  available  in  English. 

It  would  be  very  odd,  if  we  were  not  so  much 
accustomed  to  it,  that  a  volume  or  volumes  entitled 
The  Poetical  Works  of  Chaucer  should  include 
Melibeus  and  the  Parson's  Tale.  In  the  latter, 
Chaucer  has  carried  his  dramatic  sympathy  to  the 
point  where  poetry  is  rejected  as  a  sort  of  invention 
of  the  devil.  In  the  former  ("  a  little  thing  in 
prose,"  as  he  calls  it  in  one  of  those  delicious  touches 
of  his  that  often  lie  too  deep  for  laughter — it  is 
enormously  long  besides  being  portentously  dull, 
and  would  take  about  two  hours  and  a  half  in  the 
telling)  he  is  making  fun  of  the  contention  of  the 
romantic  school  that  their  poetry  is  the  only  genuine 
thing,  and  that  if  we  will  not  have  Sir  Tbopas,  we 
shall  have  Melibeus — certainly  an  awful  alternative 
either  way.  We  may  be  thankful  to  Chaucer  for 
this  among  his  many  mercies,  that  his  humour  took 
this  particular  line,  and  that  he  did  not  waste  his 
time,  and  probably  mislead  many  generations  of 
critics,  by  going  through  the  more  elaborate  jest  of 
giving  us  the  whole  of  Melibeus  in  verse,  even  had  the 
verse  been  as  smooth  and  as  workmanlike  as  that 
of  the  Confessio  Amantis. 


THE    CANTERBURY   TALES          51 

If  we  set  aside  the  little  thing  in  prose,  the  wild 
burlesque  of  Sir  Tkopas,  and  the  Parson's  sermon, 
twenty- one  tales  in  verse  are  left.  In  estimating  the 
effective  poetical  value  of  the  whole  work,  we  have 
to  consider  partly  what  I  have  already  hinted  at,  the 
entire  construction  in  which  the  tales  are  set,  and 
the  dramatic  fitness  of  each  story  to  the  occasion 
of  the  telling  and  the  person  of  the  teller ;  and 
partly,  the  poetic  quality  and  excellence  of  the 
stories  themselves.  The  former  criterion  is  strictly 
relevant  to  our  judgment  of  Chaucer  as  a  creative 
artist.  But  this  kind  of  creative  art  may  exist  in 
its  highest  perfection — as  it  does  in  Scott  for  in- 
stance, or  in  Dickens — without  entering  the  sphere 
of  poetry  at  all.  In  David  Copperfield  or  the  Anti- 
quary we  have  a  little  world  of  people  as  living,  as 
interesting,  as  distinct  and  various  as  the  God's 
plenty  of  the  Canterbury  Pilgrims.  In  the  main 
framework  of  the  Canterbury  Tales — the  prologues 
and  interstitial  verse — there  is  little  that  could  not 
be  done  in  prose,  at  all  events  in  the  prose  of  a  more 
mature  accomplishment.  For  poetry,  in  the  sense 
of  high  poetry,  we  must  look  mainly  to  the  tales 
themselves. 

The  twenty-one  which  we  have  to  consider  fall 
naturally  into  three  divisions.  Seven  are  serious 
in  subject  and  treatment ;  those  of  Palamon  and 
Arcite,  of  Custance,  of  Griselda,  of  Cambuscan,  of 
Dorigen,  of  Appius  and  Virginia,  and  of  the  little 


52  CHAUCER 

Christian  boy  in  Asia.  Seven  are  what  Chaucer 
himself  very  aptly  calls  harlotry  ;  those  told  by  the 
Miller  and  Reeve,  the  Friar  and  Sompnour,  the 
Merchant  and  Shipman,  and  the  fragment  which 
is  all  we  are  allowed  to  hear — though  it  has  perhaps 
already  gone  quite  far  enough — of  the  life  of  Perkin 
Reveller,  the  Idle  Apprentice.  Seven  are  in  an  inter- 
mediate or  mixed  manner.  Of  these  last,  two  are 
hardly  poems  at  all,  so  much  as  versified  material 
for  sermons,  tales  told  for  edification,  not  for  de- 
light. The  Legend  of  Saint  Cecilia  puts  into  verse, 
with  considerable  dexterity  but  with  little  beauty  or 
imagination,  the  prose  of  the  Golden  Legend  with  all 
its  prosaic  details  even  down  to  the  absurd  etymo- 
logies. The  Monk's  Tale,  while  it  contains  passages 
of  fine  rhetoric,  has  no  unity  of  construction,  no 
organic  quality.  A  string  of  instances  chosen  out 
of  a  stock  such  as,  ever  since  Lactantius  wrote  the 
De  Mortibus  Persecutorum,  formed  a  regular  part  of 
every  churchman's  library,  is  sufficient  material  for  a 
sermon,  but  hardly  for  a  poem.  Both  of  these  pieces 
seem  clearly  to  be  early  work,  retouched  and  inserted 
here.  The  other  five  differ  from  these  two  in  con- 
structive quality  ;  but  they  also  differ  from  the  first 
group  of  seven  in  not  treating  the  story  with  high 
poetic  seriousness.  They  do  not  stand  out  against 
the  general  narrative  framework  of  the  tales  as 
against  a  background  of  lower  tone  ;  in  some  cases 
they  rise  out  of  it,  or  fade  into  it,  almost  insensibly. 


THE   CANTERBURY   TALES          53 

As  stories  indeed,  while  the  Canon's  Yeoman's  Tale 
and  the  Manciple's  Tale  are  trivial,  and  the  Wife  of 
Bath's  Tale  a  slight  thing  pleasantly  told,  it  would 
be  difficult  to  beat  the  Pardoner's  Tale  of  the  three 
thieves  for  grim  strength,  or  the  Nun's  Priest's 
Tale  of  the  cock  and  fox  for  humour  and  light 
grace.  But  one  does  not  look  in  them  for  really 
great  poetry. 

Even  in  the  seven  serious  tales,  the  poetry  seldom 
rises  to  a  high  tension.  To  the  Knight's  Tale  I  will 
return  in  a  moment.  In  the  rest  we  may  notice  the 
relaxation  of  a  genius  which  had  ascended  in  its 
central  period  to  poetry,  not  of  greater  or  sunnier 
charm,  but  of  more  ardent  imagination,  of  a  loftier 
purpose  and  movement.  The  Clerk's  Tale  of  Gri- 
selda  is  interesting  as  showing  a  wavering  between 
romantic  and  humanistic  treatment.  It  is  because 
the  difference  is  never  adjusted  that,  with  all  its 
many  beauties,  it  is  on  the  whole  a  failure  as  a  poem. 
When  he  wrote  it,  Chaucer  was  clearly  not  at  the 
stage,  or  in  the  mood,  where  he  could  treat  it  in  the 
spirit  of  the  fabliau.  He  had  passed  out  of  the 
romantic  atmosphere  into  the  open  air.  But  in  cool 
daylight  the  whole  story  of  Griselda  is  either  pre- 
posterous or  shocking  ;  in  either  case  not  fit  material 
for  high  art.  That  it  made  a  great  impression  on 
Petrarch,  from  whom  Chaucer  took  it,  is  matter  of 
known  fact.  But  Petrarch  in  his  whole  life  seems 
never  once  to  have  come  into  contact  with  real  things. 


54  CHAUCER 

This  relaxation  has  its  degree  of  seriousness.  In 
the  stories  of  Custance  and  of  Dorigen  Chaucer  finds 
ample  scope  for  beauty,  imagination,  pity,  as  well  as 
for  the  special  graces  of  romance.  The  former  rises 
more  than  once  to  a  splendid  eloquence. 

Paraventure  in  thilke  large  book 

Which  that  men  clepe  the  heaven,  ywritten  was 

With  sterres,  when  that  he  his  birthe  took, 

That  he  for  love  should  han  his  death,  alas  ! 

For  in  the  sterres,  clearer  than  in  glass, 

Is  written,  God  wot,  whoso  could  it  read, 

The  death  of  every  man,  withouten  dread. 

This  is  noble  poetry  at  high  tension ;  and  as  noble, 
and  more  piercingly  vivid,  is  another  famous  stanza  : 

Have  ye  nat  seen  sometime  a  pale  face 
Among  a  press,  of  him  that  hath  be  lad 
Toward  his  death,  whereas  him  gat  no  grace, 
And  such  a  colour  in  his  face  hath  had, 
Men  mighte  know  his  face  that  was  bestad, 
Amonges  all  the  faces  in  that  rout  ? 
So  stant  Custance,  and  looketh  her  about. 

But  the  essential  difference  between  the  tale  of  Cus- 
tance and  the  Book  of  Troilus  and  Creseide  is  that  the 
one  is  but  a  tale,  told  gracefully  and  movingly  to 
pass  the  time  away,  and  the  other  a  creative  master- 
piece going  to  the  heart  of  life. 

Even  the  Knight's  Tale,  with  its  stately  move- 
ment and  lavish  richness  of  ornament,  does  not 
bring  us  into  the  heart  of  things.  It  is  no  deroga- 
tion from  a  poem  which  is  one  of  the  chief  splen- 


PALAMON   AND   ARCITE  55 

dours  of  our  literature  to  say  this.  The  same  might 
be  said  of  another  poem  which  on  its  smaller  scale 
much  resembles  it,  Keats'  Lamia.  It  is  arguable 
that  Lamia  is  Keats'  finest  poem  ;  and  the  Knight's 
Tale  is,  I  suppose,  the  single  poem  which  represents 
Chaucer  most  fully.  In  it  the  pictorial  or  decorative 
value  of  his  poetry  is  at  its  maximum.  It  is  all  beauti- 
ful, all  dexterous  and  masterly,  all  Chaucer  at  a  high 
level  that  only  comes  short  of  his  highest.  It  has 
more  range  than  any  other  single  poem  of  his ;  it 
supplies  more  memorable  phrases  and  lovely  lines. 
It  ranges  from  the  sweet  garrulous  manner  of  the 
romance-writer,  to  a  loftiness  and  incisiveness  that 
are  almost  Homeric,  almost  Virgilian. 

Alas,  why  pleynen  folk  so  in  commune 
Of  purveyance  of  God,  or  of  fortune, 
That  giveth  them  full  oft  in  many  a  guise 
Well  better  than  they  can  themself  devise  ? 

These  lines  recall  the  great  words  of  Zeus  at  the 
opening  of  the  Odyssey — 

Alas,  how  idly  do  these  mortals  blame 
The  Gods,  as  though  by  our  devising  came 
The  evil  that  in  spite  of  ordinance 
By  their  own  folly  for  themselves  they  frame  ! 

The  words  of  Arcite — 

So  stood  the  heaven  when  that  we  were  born  : 
We  must  endure  :  this  is  the  short  and  plain — 

seem  to  echo  some  stately  cadence  of  the  Aeneid  like 
the  Stat  sua  cuique  dies  or  the  su-peranda  omnisfortuna 


56  CHAUCER 

ferendo  est.  Now  we  come  on  a  fully  elaborated  epic 
simile — • 

Right  as  the  hunter  in  the  regne  of  Thrace 

That  standeth  at  the  gappe  with  a  spear, 

Whan  hunted  is  the  lion  or  the  bear, 

And  heareth  him  come  rushing  in  the  greaves 

And  breaketh  both  the  boughes  and  the  leaves, 

And  thinketh,  Here  cometh  my  mortal  enemy, 

IVithoute  fail  he  mote  be  dead,  or  I : 

For  either  I  mote  slay  him  at  the  gap, 

Or  he  mote  slain  me,  if  that  me  mishap  : 

So  fareden  they  : 

and  again,  on  a  line  of  Greek  simplicity  like  that 
of  Palamon's — 

For  since  the  day  is  come  that  I  shall  die — 

the  sort  of  line  in  which  the  art  is  so  consummate 
that  it  looks  like  accident.    We  have  passages  of  light 
speed,  those  lovely  lines  for  instance  beginning — 
The  busy  lark,  the  messenger  of  day, 

that  read  like  a  piece  of  early  Shakespeare  ;  and  con- 
centrated couplets,  now  smooth  and  weighty  like  the 
comment  of  Theseus, 

Then  is  it  wisdom,  as  it  thinketh  me, 
To  make  a  virtue  of  necessity  ; 

now  filled  with  lyric  air  and  fire,  as  in  the  lamenta- 
tion of  the  Athenian  women  over  Arcite's  body  (like 
the  weeping  in  Troy  over  Hector,  Chaucer  is  bold 
enough  to  say) — 

Why  woldestow  be  dead,  these  women  cry, 
And  haddest  gold  enough,  and  Emily  ? 


PALAMON  AND  ARCITE  57 

In  the  Knight's  Tale  Chaucer  (again  like  Keats  in 
Lamia]  was  trying  to  write  as  well  as  he  could.  If 
a  fault  in  it  is  to  be  hinted  at,  it  is  that  now  and  then 
(but  here  again  we  must  remember  that  the  tale  is 
told  not  in  his  own  person,  but  in  the  Knight's)  he 
seems  to  pay  a  little  too  much  attention  to  the 
writing,  and  does  not  give  quite  free  play  to  his 
humour  or  to  his  power  of  dramatic  imagination. 
With  Chaucer,  indeed,  as  with  that  college  friend  of 
Johnson's  who  has  made  himself  immortal  by  a 
single  thoughtless  phrase,  "I  don't  know  how,  cheer- 
fulness was  always  breaking  in."  When  he  says 
of  the  portraits  in  the  temple  of  Mars — 

All  be  that  thilkc  time  they  were  unborn, 
Yet  was  their  death  depeinted  therebeforne  : 

when,  in  the  highly  wrought  and  noble  description 
of  Arcite's  death,  he  says — 

His  spirit  changed  house,  and  wente  there, 
As  I  came  never,  I  cannot  tellen  where  : 

it  is  with  the  flicker  of  a  smile,  checked  as  soon  as 
it  appears.  The  two  passages  are  in  singular  like- 
ness and  contrast  to  two  others  of  the  same  purport 
in  Shakespeare,  where  the  lightning  of  a  grimmer 
laughter  flashes  across  a  situation  of  tragic  horror. 
"  This  prophecy  Merlin  shall  make  ;  for  I  live  before 
his  time,"  says  the  Fool  in  Lear,  in  a  passage  which 
is  vainly  rejected  as  an  interpolation  by  some  editors. 
"  In  heaven  ;  send  thither  to  see  :  if  your  messenger 


58  CHAUCER 

find  him  not  there,  seek  him  i'  the  other  place  your- 
self," is  the  sinister  sarcasm  of  Hamlet.  But  here, 
as  even  in  the  dying  words  of  Arcite  with  all  their 
unsurpassable  grace  and  tenderness,  the  strange  sob 
of  their  cadences — 

What  is  this  world  ?  what  asketh  men  to  have  ? 
Now  with  his  love,  now  in  his  colde  grave 
Alone,  withouten  any  company — 

we  are  in  the  faint  world  of  romance,  among  dreams 
that  linger  a  moment,  retreating  in  the  dawn. 

But  in  their  main  structure  and  substance,  even 
where  they  deal  with  romantic  stories  and  episodes, 
the  Canterbury  Tales  represent  the  reaction  from 
romance.  Chaucer  brought  poetry  into  the  open 
air,  just  when  the  romantic  atmosphere  was  begin- 
ning to  be  oppressive.  It  was  not  before  this,  it  was 
more  likely  a  little  later,  that  the  English  metrical 
romance  reached  its  last  and  perhaps  its  greatest 
success  in  Sir  Degrevaunt.  But  over  Degrevaunt 
and  all  his  kin  rests  henceforth  the  mocking  note  of 
Sir  Tho-pas.  Their  feet  move  in  an  elderly  morning 
dew ;  their  sentiment  begins  to  look  tawdry  under 
the  daylight.  Yet  on  the  other  hand  in  contrast 
with  the  author  of  Piers  Ploughman  Chaucer  is  the 
head  of  the  romantic  school,  as  Homer  is  romantic 
in  contrast  with  Hesiod.  He  carries  romance  even 
into  his  comedy,  as  he  carries  his  comedy  even  into 
romance.  This  is  what  gives  his  work  so  com- 


REACTION   FROM   ROMANCE         59 

plex  and  intricate  a  fascination.  I  have  already 
spoken  of  the  Nun's  Priest's  Tale  as  a  masterpiece 
in  his  lighter  style  of  poetry ;  airy,  delicate,  exqui- 
sitely humorous,  with  a  light  silvery  grace  about 
it,  although  it  is  only  silver  and  not  gold.  It  is  in 
this  poem  that  he  makes  his  most  direct  attack  on 
the  romances — 

This  story  is  all  so  true,  I  undertake, 
As  is  the  book  of  Lancelot  de  Lake. 

In  a  way  too,  it  is  all  so  poetical,  all  so  romantic. 
He  is  a  poet  making  fun  of  poetry,  just  as,  being  an 
accomplished  and  sensitive  stylist,  he  is  so  fond  of 
parodying  style,  even  his  own.  Unless  we  realise 
how  continually  he  is  doing  this,  we  miss  half  his 
meaning.  Sometimes  it  is  done  quite  broadly,  oftener 
with  so  demure  an  air  as  almost  to  escape  notice. 

For  the  orizont  had  reft  the  sunne's  light 
(This  is  as  much  to  sayn  as  it  was  night) : 

it  may  be  suspected  that  here  he  is  making  fun  of 
Dante. 

And  in  his  ire  he  hath  his  wife  yslayn  : 
This  is  th1  effect,  there  is  no  more  to  sayn  : 

this  is  a  parody  of  his  own  epic  manner.  May's 
visit  to  the  sick-bed  of  Damian  in  the  Merchant's 
Tale  is  a  conscious  parody  of  Cressida's  visit  to  the 
sick-bed  of  Troilus.  It  is  audaciously  introduced  by 


60  CHAUCER 

the  very  phrase,  "  pity  runneth  soon  in  gentle  heart," 
used  with  such  serious  beauty  in  Palamon  and  Arcite 
and  used  again  with  a  slighter  and  subtler  touch  of 
comedy  in  the  proem  of  the  falcon's  speech  to 
Canace ;  that  speech  itself  being  a  parody  from  be- 
ginning to  end  of  Chaucer's  own  seriously  romantic 
manner  as  we  see  it  in  the  Legend,  of  Good,  Women. 
Indeed,  except  where  Chaucer  is  at  his  very  highest 
elevation,  or  where,  as  in  the  Prioress'  Tale,  he  sup- 
presses it  for  dramatic  purposes,  the  suspicion  of 
parody,  the  lurking  instinct  of  making  fun,  is  never 
far  round  the  corner.  It  glances  and  sparkles 
through  the  Knight's  Tale ;  it  gives  added  breadth 
and  charm  to  the  earlier  books  of  Troilus  and  Cre- 
seide.  It  keeps  his  tenderness  from  becoming  senti- 
mental, as  his  sentiment  keeps  it  in  turn  from 
becoming  heartless. 

This  comes  out  most  vividly  in  his  treatment  of 
the  feathered  things,  the  "  smale  foules,"  of  which 
he  was  so  loving  and  so  keen  an  observer.  With 
his  romantic  passion  for  birds,  he  is  full  of  their 
comic  aspect.  He  is  alike  responsive  to  the  magic 
of  the  nightingale  and  to  the  absurdity  of  the 
dove  sitting  upon  a  barn-roof.  The  Parliament 
of  Fowls  is  a  sort  of  epitome  of  his  own  poetical 
genius  on  all  its  sides :  the  romantic  sensibility  of 
the  turtle — 

For  though  she  died,  I  would  none  other  make  ; 
I  will  be  hers  till  that  the  death  me  take  : 


REACTION   FROM   ROMANCE         61 

the  reaction  from  romance  in  the  duck — 

Who  can  a  reason  find  or  wit  in  that  ? 

Yea,  quek  !  yit  quod  the  duck  :  full  well  and  fair  ! 

There  be  mo  sterres,  God  wot,  than  a  pair  : 

the  high  seriousness  with  which  that  Canterbury 
pilgrim  is  checked  by  the  tercelet — 

Thy  kind  is  of  so  low  a  wretchedness 

That  what  love  is  thou  canst  not  see  ne  guess. 

And  so  also  with  his  loving  and  humorous  view 
of  other  animals,  like  cats  and  dogs,  as  in  the 
lines — 

And  if  the  cattes  skin  be  sleek  and  gay, 
She  wol  nat  dwell  in  house  half  a  day  ; 
But  forth  she  wol,  ere  any  day  be  dawed, 
To  show  her  skin,  and  gone  a-caterwawed  : 

or  in  a  passage  about  dogs'  manners  in  the  Parson's 
Tale  which  can  hardly  be  quoted  with  decorum,  but 
which  is  even  more  intensely  funny  and  true  to  life 
than  Launce's  lecture  to  Crab  in  the  Two  Gentlemen 
of  Verona. 

Seldom  for  very  long  together  does  Chaucer  keep 
perfectly  serious.  But  the  world  itself  is  not  con- 
stantly serious ;  and  when  it  is,  it  is  often  with  the 
seriousness,  not  of  a  great  art  that  sweeps  by  with 
sceptred  pall,  but  of  a  Puritanism  that  renounces  art 
altogether.  Of  Chaucer's  Muse,  both  in  her  more 


62  CHAUCER 

impassioned  and  in  her  lighter  vein,  it  may  well 
be  said — 

By  her  attire  so  bright  and  shene, 
Men  might  perceive  well  and  seen 
She  was  not  of  religioun. 

Yet  in  this  bright  secular  world  we  may  see,  towards 
the  end,  the  spirit  of  Puritanism  rising  and  casting 
a  shadow  over  his  work ;  not  merely  in  the  recanta- 
tion at  the  conclusion  of  the  Canterbury  Tales,  but 
in  the  grave  impressive  moralisations  with  which  the 
Doctor's  and  the  Manciple's  Tales  end — though 
here,  once  more,  we  must  not  forget  the  dramatic 
element.  Even  the  light  -  hearted  Paganism  of 
Boccaccio  had  ended  thus ;  as  did,  a  century  later, 
the  splendid  humanistic  art  of  Botticelli ;  as  did  the 
whole  Renaissance  movement  by  the  end  of  the  six- 
teenth century.  In  Chaucer's  own  age  and  country, 
which  were  also  the  age  and  country  of  Wiclif  and 
of  John  Ball,  Langland  gives  us  a  criticism  of  life 
deeper  than  Chaucer's,  though  narrower.  As  re- 
sponsive to  the  wretchedness  of  this  world  as 
Chaucer  was  to  its  variety  and  beauty,  he  dreams,  not 
of  a  House  of  Fame,  not  of  ladies  dead  and  lovely 
knights,  but  of  heaven  opened,  of  Mercy  and  Truth 
meeting,  of  Righteousness  and  Peace  kissing  one 
another.  When  the  vision  comes  on  him — 

Into  the  land  of  longing  •  alone  she  me  brought, 

And  in  a  mirror  that  hight  middle-earth  •  she  made  to 

behold. 
Son,  she  said  to  me — here  might  thou  see  -wonders. 


SERIOUSNESS  IN    ART  63 

But  they  are  not  the  wonders  of  Chaucer ;  and  in 
that  mirror  the  world  is  seen,  full  indeed  of  sharp 
colour  and  life,  but  without  romance,  without  joy, 
without  pity. 

This  seriousness  is  quite  a  different  thing  from 
the  high  seriousness  of  art.  In  its  eyes,  Troilus  and 
Creseide  falls  under  the  same  condemnation  with 
the  Miller's  Tale ;  both  are  mere  worldly  vanity. 
But  as  poetry,  the  distinction  between  the  two  is 
evidently  profound.  We  can  hardly  ignore,  or  leave 
unanswered,  the  question  whether  the  Miller's  Tale, 
and  that  whole  body  of  brilliant  work  to  which  it 
belongs,  be  poetry  at  all,  and  if  so,  in  what  sense. 
To  reduce  the  matter  to  a  concrete  instance,  let  me 
take  two  passages  which  are  closely  alike  in  sub- 
stance and  handling.  In  the  Sompnour's  Tale  the 
friar  responds  to  the  invitation  to  order  his  own 
dinner  as  follows  : — 

Now  dame,  quod  he,  je  vous  dy  sanz  doute, 

Have  I  not  of  a  capon  but  the  liver, 

And  of  your  softe  bread  not  but  a  shiver, 

And  after  that  a  roasted  pigges  head 

(But  that  I  wold  no  beast  for  me  were  dead) 

Than  had  I  with  you  homely  suffisance. 

I  am  a  man  of  little  sustenance. 

My  spirit  hath  his  fostering  in  the  Bible  ; 

The  body  is  aye  so  ready  and  penible 

To  wake,  that  my  stomach  is  destroyed. 

The  other  passage  is  from  an  author  who  is  like 
Chaucer  in  many  qualities,  in  a  combination  of 


64  CHAUCER 

humour  and  sentiment,  in  creative  fertility,  and  in 
the  breadth  of  his  outlook  on  human  life. 

"I  think,  young  woman,"  said  Mrs.  Gamp,  in  a  tone 
expressive  of  weakness,  "  that  I  could  pick  a  little  bit 
of  pickled  salmon,  with  a  nice  little  sprig  of  fennel 
and  a  sprinkling  of  white  pepper.  I  takes  new  bread, 
my  dear,  with  jest  a  little  pat  of  fresh  butter,  and  a 
mossel  of  cheese.  In  case  there  should  be  such  a  thing 
as  a  cowcumber  in  the  'ouse,  will  you  be  so  kind  as 
bring  it,  for  I'm  rather  partial  to  'em,  and  they  does  a 
world  of  good  in  a  sickroom.  If  they  draws  the 
Brighton  Tipper  here,  I  takes  that  ale  at  night,  my 
love  :  it  bein'  considered  wakeful  by  the  doctors.  And 
whatever  you  do,  young  woman,  don't  bring  more 
than  a  shilling's  worth  of  gin  and  water  when  I  rings 
the  bell  a  second  time  ;  for  that  is  always  my  allow- 
ance, and  I  never  takes  a  drop  beyond." 

This  last  passage  is  of  course  not  poetry ;  what 
is  it,  if  anything,  beyond  the  mere  absence  of  metrical 
form,  in  which  it  differs  from  the  other?  There 
are  two  things  to  say  about  this :  first,  that  the 
matter  of  metrical  form  is  not  accidental  but  essen- 
tial ;  secondly,  that  a  poet  working  in  a  medium 
which  is  the  medium  of  poetry  is  producing  poten- 
tial poetry,  and  that  this  potential  poetry  is  to  some 
extent,  which  may  be  greater  or  less,  converted  into 
actual  poetry  in  the  process  of  production.  He  may 
let  it  run  at  low  pressure ;  he  may  reduce  the  ele- 
ments of  beauty,  of  construction  and  imagination ; 
but  the  interaction  of  the  mind  of  a  poet  and  the 
forms  of  poetry  is  so  close  that  he  cannot,  nor  would 


SERIOUSNESS   IN  ART  65 

he  if  he  could,  wholly  shut  these  elements  off.  Even 
where  the  verse  seems  to  run  automatically  off  the 
machine,  to  be  at  low  pressure  or  at  none,  the  artist's 
hand  is  on  the  lever,  and  able  at  any  moment  to  fill 
and  flood  the  verse  with  the  quality  of  essential 
poetry.  The  Pardoner's  Tale  is  a  fabliau  which  is 
entirely  suited  to  prose  treatment,  and  has  in  fact 
made  its  impression  on  Europe  through  prose 
versions,  from  the  Gesta  Romanorum  to  the  Jungle 
Book.  But  it  rises  without  effort  in  Chaucer's  hands 
to  such  grave  rhythmic  rhetoric  as  this : 

And  on  the  ground,  which  is  my  mother's  gate, 
I  knocke  with  my  staff  both  early  and  late 
And  saye  :  Leve  mother,  let  me  in  ! 
Lo  how  I  vanish,  flesh  and  blood  and  skin  ! 
Alas,  when  shall  my  bones  been  at  rest  ? 

And  in  the  opening  lines  of  the  Wife  of  Bath's  Tale — 

In  the  olde  dayes  of  the  King  Arthour 
Of  which  that  Britons  speaken  great  honour, 
All  was  this  land  fulfilled  of  fayerie  : 
The  Elf-Queen,  with  her  jolly  company, 
Danced  full  oft  in  many  a  greene  mead — 

we  have  the  note  that,  at  a  higher  imaginative  pres- 
sure, but  hardly  with  more  melodious  grace,  comes 
back  in  the  splendid  prologue  to  Lamia  : 

Upon  a  time,  before  the  faery  broods 
Drove  Nymph  and  Satyr  from  the  prosperous  woods, 
Before  King  Oberon's  bright  diadem, 
Sceptre,  and  mantle  clasp'd  with  dewy  gem, 
Frighted  away  the  Dryads  and  the  Fauns 
From  rushes  green,  and  brakes,  and  cowslipp'd  lawns. 

E 


66  CHAUCER 

The  difficulty  disappears  if  we  take  larger  views. 
For  poetry,  like  all  real  art,  is  a  function  of  life,  and 
its  province  is  as  wide  as  that  of  life  itself.  The 
harlotries  of  the  Canterbury  Tales  have  qualities 
other  than  those  of  poetry  ;  but  even  of  them  it  may 
be  said  that  the  thing  could  not  be  done  in  prose, 
or  at  least  that  in  prose  it  would  lose  a  specific  charm, 
a  definite  artistic  quality.  It  comes  of  his  width  of 
outlook,  his  large  sane  handling  of  life,  that  Chaucer, 
while  at  his  slackest  he  never  loses  touch  of  beauty, 
at  his  highest  never  loses  his  sunlit  charm  and 
brilliant  speed.  He  says  of  the  Duchess  Blanch  : 

Her  list  so  well  to  live 
That  dulness  was  of  her  adrad. 

Chaucer  is  never  dull ;  except  where  he  means  to  be 
dull,  and  is  so  dramatically.  It  is  far  otherwise 
with  his  successors.  "  Chaucer  fain  would  have  me 
taught,  but  I  was  dull,"  says  Occleve ;  and  all  his 
readers — they  are  not  many — answer  fervently, 
"  Indeed  you  were."  The  Chaucerians  are  always 
being  dull.  Even  their  best  work  lacks  the  ripple 
and  sparkle  that  never  deserts  that  of  their  master. 
It  is  for  this  that  even  the  high  Muse  is  indulgent  to 
him  when,  in  the  not  unkindly  phrase  of  Dryden,  he 
mingles  trivial  things  with  those  of  deeper  moment, 
and  forgets  that  an  author  is  not  to  write  all  he  can, 
but  only  all  he  ought. 

But  Chaucer's  supreme  work  is  neither  his  earliest 


THE   CENTRAL   PERFECTION         67 

nor  his  latest ;  it  is  the  work  of  that  central  period 
where  his  field  first  broadens,  and  the  enchanted 
atmosphere  of  romance  begins  to  melt  into  the  open 
day.  Such  is  the  law  of  progress  in  poetry.  We 
may  long  to  fix  that  brief  perfection ;  but  we  might 
as  well  attempt  to  stay  the  sun.  It  is  there  that 
we  find  his  largest  and  firmest  handling  of  beauty. 
In  his  earlier  and  wholly  romantic  work  we 

may  on  these  branches  hear 
The  smale  birdes  singen  clear 
Their  blissful  sweete  song  pitous, 

in  a  world  of  garden-closes  where  the  grass  is 
powdered  with  daisies,  where  the  railed  alleys  are 
"  shadowed  well  with  blosmy  boughes  green,  and 
benched  new  and  sanded  all  the  ways";  the  beauty 
is  small  and  intricate,  like  that  of  pictures  in  a 
painted  book.  From  that  lovely  babble  of  birds — 

Layes  of  love  full  well  souning 
They  sungen  in  their  jargoning — 

he  rises  to  a  freer  handling,  at  once  more  natural  and 
more  impassioned  : 

A  nightingale  upon  a  cedar  green 
Under  the  chamber  wall  thereas  she  lay, 
Full  loude  sang  again  the  moone  sheen, 
Paraunture  in  his  birdes  wise  a  lay 
Of  love. 

Just  so  likewise  from  his  romantic  descriptions  of 


68  CHAUCER 

summer  dawns  he  rises  to  this  picture  in  the  large 
epic  manner: 

On  heaven  yet  the  sterres  weren  seen 
Although  full  pale  ywaxen  was  the  moon, 
And  whiten  gan  the  orizonte  sheen 
All  eastward. 

In  both  of  these  passages  we  hear  the  great  note  of 
classical  romance  which  is  poetry  consummate. 

It  is  by  virtue  of  his  high  poetry  that  Chaucer 
takes  his  rank  as  a  poet. 

Sometimes  a-dropping  from  the  sky 
I  heard  the  skylark  sing  ; 
Sometimes  all  little  birds  that  are, 
How  they  seemed  to  fill  the  sea  and  air 
With  their  sweet  jargoning  ! 

(with  what  a  beautiful  instinct  Coleridge  uses  the 
Chaucerian  word !) 

And  now  'twas  like  all  instruments  ; 
Now  like  a  lonely  flute  ; 
And  now  it  is  an  angel's  song 
That  makes  the  heavens  be  mute. 

To  this  angel's  song  he  rises.  It  ceased ;  and  it  is 
elsewhere,  in  a  later  day,  that  Chapman  heard,  and 
we  hear  now 

the  music  of  the  spheres 
And  all  the  angels  singing  out  of  heaven. 

As  the  daylight  broadens,  the  enchantment  slowly 
fades  away.  Once  the  sun  has  climbed  high,  we 
must  needs  look  back  wistfully,  not  only  to  that 


RETURN   TO   ROMANCE  69 

magnificence  of  the  splendori  antelucani,  but  even 
beyond  it  to  the  magic  of  dusk,  to  the  world  of  en- 
closed gardens,  of  cool  green  rooms,  of  lit  chapels 
and  shadowy  halls.  For  poetry  must  perpetually 
return  to  the  romance  that  again  and  again  she  seems 
to  have  outgrown.  "  He  seeth  well,"  says  the  author 
of  the  High  History  of  the  Holy  Grail,  "  that  albeit 
the  night  were  dark,  within  was  so  great  brightness 
of  light  without  candles  that  it  was  marvel ;  and  it 
seemed  him  the  sun  shone  there.  With  that  he 
issueth  forth  and  betaketh  him  to  the  way  he  had 
abandoned,  and  prayeth  God  grant  he  may  find 
Lancelot  of  the  Lake." 


SPENSER 


THE  Middle  Ages  died  hard  ;  and  nowhere  harder 
than  in  this  island  of  the  West,  which  was  already 
marked  among  other  nations  by  two  specific  quali- 
ties— a  tenacious  conservatism,  and  an  instinct  for 
adapting  rather  than  replacing  old  institutions,  for 
making  changes  and  even  revolutions  under  accus- 
tomed names  and  inherited  forms.  The  coming  of 
the  Renaissance  into  England  was  strange,  troubled, 
irregular.  In  some  ways  one  might  say  it  never 
came  at  all,  or  came  in  so  imperfect  a  shape,  with 
such  transformed  features,  that  it  seems  to  demand 
another  name.  This  was  so  over  the  whole  field  of 
civilisation,  in  religion  and  politics  as  well  as  in  art. 
But  in  poetry  the  process  of  change  was  especially 
intricate:  the  threads  of  influence,  the  lines  of 
growth,  are  complex  and  not  easy  to  disentangle. 
The  fifteenth  century  was  emphatically,  not  only 
in  this  country  but  throughout  Europe,  not  an  age  of 
great  poetry.  In  England  the  Chaucerians  continued, 
with  ever-dwindling  inspiration,  with  growing  loss 
of  imaginative  hold  on  life  and  power  of  interpret- 
ing it,  the  tradition  created  and  fixed  by  Chaucer 
himself.  Beyond  the  Chaucerians  we  have  the 


73 


74  SPENSER 

mystery  plays,  the  ballads,  a  small  supply  of  scat- 
tered lyrics :  a  heap  of  confused  scraps,  among 
which  the  vital  process  most  visible  is  rather  the 
decay  which  precedes  germination  than  germination 
itself.  The  earlier  Italian  Renaissance  had  in  poetry 
been  succeeded  by  a  long  period  of  stagnation. 
Petrarch  and  Boccaccio  died  in  1374  and  1375; 
for  a  full  century  afterwards  there  is  no  Italian  poet 
of  the  first  or  second  rank,  no  outstanding  mark  in 
the  progress  of  poetry.  The  quattrocentisti  are  the 
painters.  In  literature  it  was  the  age  not  of  the 
poets  but  of  the  scholars.  Just  at  the  end  of  the 
fifteenth  century  comes  Boiardo's  Orlando.  Boiardo 
died  in  1494,  the  year  of  the  French  invasion  of 
Italy.  In  France  there  had  been  the  same  lull  and 
pause ;  Fra^ois  Villon  is  there  the  chief  poet  of  a 
century  which  was  in  the  main  occupied  with  other 
things  than  poetry. 

Early  in  the  sixteenth  century  there  was  a  great 
revival  of  poetry  in  Italy,  and,  a  little  later,  in 
France,  under  an  impulse  partly  native,  partly  com- 
municated from  Italy.  The  impact  of  this  move- 
ment reached  England  just  at  a  time  when,  even 
apart  from  it,  there  were  signs  of  a  poetic  revival. 
The  joy  of  life  had  come  back  to  letters ;  and  the 
joy  of  letters  once  more  flooded  over  life.  When 
the  head  of  the  English  Petrarch  fell  on  the  scaffold 
in  1547,  the  new  movement  had  been  fully  launched 
on  its  course. 


ELIZABETH  ANISM  75 

In  the  age  which  followed — Spenser's  age,  though 
it  was  too  various  and  too  splendid  in  its  poetical 
progress  and  achievement  to  be  described  adequately 
as  the  age  of  Spenser — we  may  then  trace  and  mark 
at  least  four  intertwined  motive  forces  or  impulses ; 
the  native,  the  classical,  the  French,  and  the  Italian. 
The  interaction  of  these  impulses  was  in  the  highest 
degree  complex  and  subtle.  We  need  not  be  too 
curious  in  attempting  to  assign  to  each  a  separate 
and  proper  force  ;  still  less  can  we  assign  to  any  one 
such  exclusive  preponderance  as  would  allow  us  to 
regard  the  others  as  relatively  unimportant.  But 
we  shall  never  properly  appreciate  Spenser  and 
Spenser's  age  unless  we  realise  vividly  in  him,  and 
in  it,  the  presence  of  all  four  in  mutual  interaction. 

First  then — and  it  is  proper  to  place  it  first, 
because  the  poetry  of  every  country  must  be  con- 
sidered as  what  it  is,  a  function  of  the  national  life — 
we  see  in  the  English  poetry  of  this  age  an  authen- 
tic revival  of  the  native  lyrical  impulse.  In  this, 
English  poetry  holds  of  none  and  borrows  of  none. 
It  is  apart  from  scholarship,  apart  from  any  effect  of 
foreign  models,  apart  from  the  Renaissance  itself, 
regarded  as  a  European  movement  which  overflowed 
into  England.  The  English  lyric  poetry  of  the 
sixteenth  century  is  as  self-originating,  as  inde- 
pendent of  external  influences,  as  the  Greek  lyric 
poetry  of  the  seventh  and  sixth  centuries  before 
Christ.  Secondly,  we  have  the  classical  impulse ; 


76  SPENSER 

the  effect  on  poetry  of  the  revival  of  learning  in 
the  previous  generation,  that  golden  age  of  the 
scholars,  of  Greece  rediscovered  and  Rome  re- 
vitalised ;  and,  together  with  this,  the  revived  and 
enlarged  appreciation  of  the  earlier  Italian  classics, 
of  Petrarch  and  to  a  less  extent  of  Dante.  Thirdly, 
we  have  the  continuous  impulse  of  the  immense 
and  splendid  body  of  contemporary  Italian  poetry, 
right  through  the  sixteenth  century,  from  Sanna- 
zaro  and  Ariosto  at  its  beginning  to  Guarini  and 
Tasso  towards  its  end.  This  impulse  came  in  part 
directly ;  in  part  as  transmitted  through  the  French 
Renaissance,  and  thus  inextricably  interwoven  with 
the  fourth  and  last  influence,  that  of  France.  The 
French  Pleiade,  just  in  the  middle  of  the  century, 
had  an  immediate  and  long-continued  effect  on  the 
development  of  poetry  in  England  which  can 
scarcely  be  over-estimated.  Spenser's  own  earlier 
poetry  is  modelled  more  immediately  and  obvi- 
ously on  that  of  Clement  Marot  than  on  the  Italian 
poets  from  whom  Marot  drew ;  and  the  French 
influence  continued  to  grow  more  and  more  im- 
portant in  English  poetry  for  upwards  of  a  century, 
through  the  successive  stages  of  its  history — in  Du 
Bellay  and  Ronsard,  in  Du  Bartas,  in  Corneille  and 
the  classicists.  But,  as  had  been  the  case  already  in 
the  age  of  Chaucer,  while  the  influence  of  French 
form  and  structure  was  more  immediate,  more  ex- 
tensive, and  more  patent,  we  must  look  beyond 


ELIZABETHANISM  77 

these  for  the  deeper  inspiration.  The  progress  of 
poetry  (that  I  may  quote  Gray's  brief  and  pregnant 
words)  was  from  Greece  to  Italy,  and  from  Italy  to 
England. 

All  these  influences,  native,  classical,  French 
Renaissance,  and  Italian,  mingle  and  accumulate  in 
Spenser.  It  is  thus — as  well  as  from  his  own  genius 
and  from  the  imposing  mass  and  brilliance  of  his 
production — that  he  is  the  central  figure  in  the 
English  poetry  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

With  Spenser  we  are  at  the  full  centre  of  the 
English  Renaissance.  For  all  his  Chaucerianism,  he 
is,  as  Chaucer  in  his  time  had  been,  a  modern  of 
the  moderns.  The  change  in  the  sky  from  evening 
to  morning  had  passed  a  generation  earlier.  Surrey 
and  Wyatt,  slender  as  is  the  volume  of  their  work, 
had  quietly  made  ancient  literature  of  the  whole  of 
earlier  English  poetry.  They  changed  an  epoch,  or 
at  least  unmistakeably  marked  its  change.  Gawain 
Douglas's  translation  of  Virgil  and  Surrey's  are  only 
thirty  years  apart  in  time :  but  they  belong  to  two 
different  worlds.  The  change  was  just  consum- 
mated when  Spenser  was  born.  Six  years  later,  the 
Elizabethan  age  began.  Six  years  more  bring  us 
to  the  birth  of  Shakespeare. 

Thus  in  Spenser  we  see  the  full  tide  of  the 
Renaissance  surging  up  through  many  channels 
round  the  stranded  ship  of  English  poetry,  floating 
her,  and  bearing  her  off  by  confused  currents  upon 


y8  SPENSER 

a  new  and  adventurous  voyage.  That  age,  like  our 
own,  went  almost  mad  over  education ;  and  Spenser 
represents  not  only  the  enlarged  outlook  and 
heightened  ambitions  of  the  new  world,  but  also  its 
rich  scholarship.  He  went  to  Cambridge  at  seven- 
teen, and  studied  there  for  seven  years  ;  it  was  an 
education  almost  as  full  and  elaborate  as  Milton's 
or  Virgil's.  There  he  lived  among  a  circle  of 
ardent  scholars,  and  received  that  bent  towards 
classicism,  as  classicism  was  then  understood,  which 
is  one  of  the  main  threads  of  influence  that  run 
through  the  whole  of  his  poetry. 

That  classicism  of  the  sixteenth  century  was  a 
very  mixed  and  intricate  thing.  On  one  side,  fol- 
lowing the  great  Italian  humanists,  it  plunged  deeply 
into  Plato  and  the  Platonic  school.  On  another, 
Ovid  was  its  master,  and  it  sought  to  reinstate  the 
brilliance,  the  dexterity,  the  accomplishment,  which 
the  Graeco-Roman  civilisation  had  reached  before  it 
fell  into  decay.  On  yet  another,  it  read  largely  and 
deeply  in  ancient  history,  to  gain  knowledge  of  the 
past  which  might  be  applied  to  actual  life,  and  to 
recover  what  it  described  in  a  compendious  phrase 
as  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients.  On  literature  it  had 
an  influence  for  both  good  and  evil.  The  fatal 
tendency  of  classicism  is  to  see  life  through  books, 
and  to  take  it  at  second  hand.  Its  natural  instinct 
is  to  copy,  and  in  doing  so,  to  copy  the  inferior 
classics,  who  are  more  copiable,  and  then  to  go  on 


ELIZABETHANISM  79 

copying  itself.  Its  scholarship  tends  towards  ped- 
antry ;  its  poets  tend  to  become  rhetoricians.  The 
influence  of  Ovid  colours  the  whole  mass  of  Eliza- 
bethan poetry  ;  that  of  Seneca  greatly  hampered  the 
growth  of  the  English  drama.  Bembo  and  Politian 
were  ranked  as  masters  alongside  of  Virgil.  "  The 
tragedies  of  Buchanan  do  justly  bring  forth  a  divine 
admiration,"  says  Sidney  in  his  Apology  for  Poetry. 
Bembo  himself  was  urgent  on  Ariosto  to  write 
Latin  poetry  only,  as  bringing  greater  fame  and 
more  assured  permanence.  There  was  a  similar 
delusion  among  the  circle  of  scholars  with  whom 
Spenser  lived  and  studied  at  Cambridge.  They  held 
one  or  both  of  two  positions.  Latin  was  the  com- 
mon international  language  of  educated  Europe,  and 
therefore  all  poetry  that  should  make  a  universal 
appeal  must  be  written  in  Latin ;  or  at  least,  the 
Latin  poets  were  the  classics,  and  therefore  any 
English  poetry  which  meant  to  take  rank  as  classical 
must  be  written  as  nearly  as  possible  in  the  Latin 
manner.  If  only  the  former  of  these  doctrines 
had  been  held,  no  great  harm  would  have  been 
done.  The  native  instinct  for  poetry  might 
have  been  trusted  to  take  care  of  itself.  But 
it  was  different  with  the  latter.  A  serious  and 
what  might  have  been  a  disastrous  attempt  was 
made  to  guide  the  stream  of  poetry  into  artificial 
channels  ;  to  copy  the  conventions  of  Latin  poetry  ; 
even  to  transplant  its  metrical  forms,  as  those  of 


8o  SPENSER 

i 

Greece   had  been   transplanted    into   Latin    poetry 
itself. 

But  this  is  a  sort  of  thing  that  cannot  be  done 
in  the  same  language  twice  ;  and  in  English  poetry 
it  had  already  been  done  once.  The  conquest  and 
almost  complete  submergence  of  the  native  English 
metrical  forms,  under  the  influence  of  the  first  Re- 
naissance and  the  decisive  effect  of  Chaucer's  genius, 
had  fixed  the  lines  of  English  poetry  once  for  all. 
In  his  furnace  the  two  metals  had  run  into  an  alloy 
which  was  finer,  harder,  and  more  ductile  than  either 
of  its  two  constituents.  Something  of  loss  there  had 
been,  but  a  greater  gain.  The  Chaucerian  metal 
became  the  basis  of  a  standard  currency,  capable 
indeed  of  modification,  enrichment,  refinement,  but 
in  its  main  substance  national  and  permanent.  It 
was  fine  enough  to  be  run  into  the  most  delicate 
moulds,  flexible  enough  to  meet,  age  after  age,  the 
ever-shifting  and  moving  requirements  of  poetry. 
If  Spenser  had  at  any  time  been  in  danger  of  being 
carried  away  by  the  new  ideas,  he  was  saved  from 
this  by  two  things ;  his  own  admiration  and  almost 
worship  of  Chaucer  on  the  one  hand,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  education  which  had  made  him 
familiar  not  only  with  the  Latin  and  with  some  of 
the  Greek  classics,  but  with  the  consummate  achieve- 
ments already  made  by  French  and  Italian  poets  in 
their  own  languages  in  the  age  just  preceding  his 
own,  and  those  still  being  made  by  their  successors. 


SPENSER   AND   SIDNEY  81 

The  goal  of  his  poetical  ambition  lay  clear  before 
him  ;  it  was  to  be  the  English  Ariosto,  the  English 
Ronsard ;  perhaps  to  be  even  more,  but  this  was 
denied  to  him,  the  English  Virgil. 

When  Spenser  left  Cambridge  in  1576,  he  was 
the  chief  figure  among  a  closely  associated  circle  of 
poets  and  scholars  which  may  remind  us  in  many 
ways  of  the  circle  of  Virgil  during  the  years  previous 
to  the  appearance  of  the  Eclogues.  They  were  full 
of  the  enthusiasm  of  youth.  In  other  European 
countries  the  poetry  of  the  late  Renaissance  was  at 
its  greatest  visible  splendour ;  it  had  reached  the 
full  maturity  which  is  recognised  afterwards — not 
at  the  time — as  presaging  the  decline.  The  Lusiads 
had  appeared  in  1572;  the  Aminta  in  1573;  the 
Sepmaine  followed  in  1579;  and  the  Giermalemme 
Liberata  in  1581.  English  poetry  was  still  on  its 
full  curve  of  ascent.  It  felt  itself  at  the  beginning 
of  a  new  age. 

Just  then  Spenser,  returning  to  London  after  two 
years  of  further  study  and  practice  in  the  north  of 
England,  made  that  acquaintance  with  Philip  Sidney 
which  disengaged  the  movement  of  English  poetry 
in  its  complete  force.  The  new  Virgil  had  found  his 
Gallus.  Sidney  was  two  years  younger  than  Spenser, 
but  he  was  one  of  those  in  whom  natural  precocity 
has  been  stimulated  yet  further  by  circumstance  and 
education.  The  eldest  son  of  the  Lord  President 
of  Wales,  he  had  been  marked  out  from  birth  for 


82  SPENSER 

great  things,  and  his  education  had  been,  even  for 
that  age,  elaborate  almost  beyond  example.  He 
came  to  Oxford  at  thirteen.  Four  years  there  were 
followed  by  three  more  spent  in  travelling  all  over 
the  Continent,  making  the  Grand  Tour  on  a  scale 
and  with  advantages  which  sent  him  back  with 
a  European  reputation  and  conversant  with  the 
whole  civilised  life  of  Europe.  He  returned  to 
England  a  finished  soldier,  courtier,  patriot,  and 
poet.  When  he  met  Spenser  he  was  only  four-and- 
twenty ;  but  he  had  already  been  English  ambassa- 
dor to  the  Emperor,  and  was  already  hailed  in  the 
ecstatic  language  of  that  age  as  the  Messiah  of 
poetry.  His  death  at  thirty-two  was  said  to  have 
plunged  all  England  into  mourning  :  both  during 
his  life  and  afterwards  he  was  idolised  by  almost 
every  one  who  had  known  him.  Not  himself  by 
the  amount  or  quality  of  his  poetry  rising  into  the 
rank  of  the  great  poets,  "  having  slipt  into  the  title 
of  a  poet,"  as  he  says  of  himself,  he  yet  still  im- 
presses us,  as  he  impressed  them,  with  a  sense  of 
poetical  distinction  and  even  genius.  Not  only  so, 
but  he  had  a  native  critical  faculty  which  was  de- 
veloped by  study,  by  wide  and  varied  reading,  and  by 
acquaintance  with  the  whole  movement  of  contem- 
porary culture,  into  an  instrument  of  exquisite  fine- 
ness, to  which  his  serious  Puritan  temper  lent  a  yet 
keener  edge.  Of  the  function  of  poetry  he  says,  in 
a  few  simple  words  that  are  startling  in  their  clear 


THE  SHEPHERDS  CALENDAR   83 

insight  and  exactness,  that  it  is  "  to  make  the  too 
much  loved  earth  more  lovely." 

On  Spenser  at  all  events  (as  through  Spenser  on 
the  whole  subsequent  course  of  English  poetry)  the 
influence  of  Sidney  was  momentous.  Its  first  result 
was  the  publication,  in  the  year  after  they  became 
acquainted,  of  the  Shepherds  Calendar.  This  was 
the  manifesto  of  the  new  poetry.  It  was  dedicated 
to  Sidney  as  Virgil's  Eclogues  were  to  Gallus ;  and 
like  them,  it  not  only  placed  its  author  at  the  head 
of  contemporary  poets,  but  was  the  symbol  and 
keynote  of  a  new  world  in  poetry. 

Its  importance  in  this  respect  was  at  once  recog- 
nised by  the  world,  as  it  had  been  by  Spenser  him- 
self and  by  the  whole  circle  to  which  he  belonged. 
Perhaps  no  work  in  poetry  has  ever  been  launched 
on  its  course  more  elaborately,  with  such  an  arma- 
ment of  defence,  explanation,  and  apology.  The 
twelve  poems  of  which  it  consists  were  embedded  in 
a  mass  of  prefaces,  introductions,  and  commentaries. 
How  far  these  were  the  work  of  E.  K.  (if  E.  K.  be 
a  real  person,  Edward  Kirke  or  another),  how  far  of 
Spenser  himself,  or  of  others,  is  not  clear :  what  is 
certain  is  that  they  represent  the  views  and  en- 
thusiasm of  the  whole  school,  and  that  in  speaking 
of  Spenser  as  they  do,  under  the  title  of  "  our  new 
poet,"  they  meant  to  enforce,  with  all  the  emphasis 
in  their  power,  their  confidence  that  this  was  the 
new  poetry.  The  curious  verses,  and  these  are 


84  SPENSER 

Spenser's  own,  attached  as  an  envoi  to  the  end  of 
the  volume,  while  for  form's  sake  they  disclaim 
rivalry  with  the  great  poets  of  an  earlier  age,  Chaucer 
and  Langland,  yet  make  the  claim  formally  and 
expressly  for  the  new  poetry  that  it  shall  outwear 
time  and  continue  till  the  world's  dissolution.  The 
claim  was  really  made  not  for  these  twelve  poems, 
but  for  the  new  poetry,  for  the  English  poetry  of  the 
Elizabethan  age.  It  was  a  great  claim  ;  and  it  was 
fully  justified. 

Of  the  twelve  eclogues  themselves  there  is  no 
particular  occasion  to  speak  here  in  detail.  They 
are  a  strange,  almost  chaotic,  mixture  of  styles  and 
manners,  ranging  in  metre  from  the  elaborate  arti- 
ficiality of  the  sestine  in  the  eighth  to  the  jigging 
couplets  of  the  second  and  fifth,  and  in  subject  from 
the  exquisite  pastoral  lyric  of  the  fourth  to  the  eccle- 
siastical polemics  of  the  ninth.  All,  and  more  than 
all,  of  the  adverse  criticism  that  may  be  made  against 
Virgil's  Eclogues  may  be  made  against  these.  Of 
them,  as  of  their  Virgilian  prototypes,  it  may  be 
said,  "  They  have  all  the  vices  and  weaknesses  of 
imitative  poetry.  Nor  are  these  failings  redeemed 
by  any  brilliant  finish  of  workmanship.  The  exe- 
cution is  uncertain,  hesitating,  sometimes  extra- 
ordinarily feeble.  Even  the  versification  is  curiously 
unequal  and  imperfect."  Yet  of  these  Spenserian 
eclogues  also  one  may  go  on  to  say,  as  of  Virgil's, 
that  granted  all  this,  it  does  not  touch  the  specific 


THE  SHEPHERDS   CALENDAR        85 

charm  of  which  these  poems  first  disclosed  the 
secret.  The  Shepherds  Calendar  has  no  distinct 
style,  but  it  has  the  germination  of  many.  It  is 
full  of  metrical  device  and  experiment.  It  con- 
tains, in  the  tenth  eclogue,  preludings  of  large-scale 
work  in  chivalrous  romance.  Finally,  here  and 
there,  and  especially  in  the  first  and  twelfth,  which 
are  really  a  single  poem  cut  into  two  in  order  to 
open  and  close  the  collection,  may  be  distinctly 
heard  the  new  note  that  is  personal  to  Spenser,  his 
unmatched  fluency  of  melody. 

From  the  moment  of  the  appearance  of  this 
volume  Spenser  became  not  only  the  leading  re- 
presentative of  the  new  poetry,  but  the  recognised 
head  of  living  English  poets.  This  position  he 
retained  until  his  death.  In  the  twenty  years  be- 
tween, the  mass  of  his  production  was  enormous. 
The  three  volumes  of  1590,  1591,  and  1596  con- 
tain between  forty  and  fifty  thousand  lines.  Much 
more,  according  both  to  probability  and  to  direct 
evidence,  was  written  by  him,  and  either  suppressed 
or  lost.  The  Faerie  Queene  alone,  as  we  possess  it, 
extends  to  close  on  thirty-five  thousand  lines ;  and 
we  have  little  more  than  half  of  it  as  it  was  planned. 
An  allegorical  romance  of  seventy  thousand  lines  in 
length  is  a  thing  that  imagination  almost  boggles  at 
— or  would  do  so  at  least  in  any  age  less  adven- 
turous, less  confident,  and  less  profuse  than  that  of 
the  matured  Renaissance. 


86  SPENSER 

Throughout  the  whole  sphere  of  life,  in  its 
crimes  and  virtues,  in  its  attempts  and  achievements, 
that  age  was  possessed  by  a  spirit  of  excess,  an  in- 
toxication of  greatness.  It  set  itself  deliberately  to 
outdo  all  that  had  hitherto  been  done.  It  built  and 
voyaged  and  discovered  and  conquered  colossally. 
In  our  own  National  Gallery,  where  it  is  one  of 
the  splendours  of  the  great  Venetian  Room,  is  a 
portrait,  by  the  Brescian  painter  Moretto,  of  Count 
Martinengo-Cesaresco,  killed  young  in  the  French 
wars  of  religion.  He  is  richly  dressed  in  silk  and 
furs,  a  gilded  sword-hilt  showing  from  under  the 
heavy  cloak.  On  a  table  by  him  are  an  antique 
lamp  and  some  coins.  His  elbow  rests  on  a  pile 
of  silken  cushions,  and  his  head  leans,  with  a  sort  of 
intensity  of  languor,  on  his  open  palm.  The  face 
is  that  of  one  in  the  full  prime  of  life  and  of  great 
physical  strength ;  very  handsome,  heavy  and  yet 
tremulously  sensitive,  the  large  eyes  gazing  at  some- 
thing unseen,  and  seeming  to  dream  of  vastness. 
On  his  bonnet  is  a  golden  plaque,  with  three  words 
of  Greek  inscribed  on  it,  tov  Ami/  iroQu),  "  Oh,  I  desire 
too  much."  Who  the  Giulia  was  whom  he  desired 
is  among  the  things  that  have  gone  to  oblivion  ;  but 
the  longing  which  the  portrait  has  immortalised  is 
not  for  one  woman,  were  she  like  Beatrice  or  Helen, 
but  for  the  whole  world.  These  ambiguous  words 
are  a  cloudy  symbol ;  and  that  picture  is  a  portrait 
of  the  spirit  of  the  Renaissance. 


POETIC   REDUNDANCE  87 

As  regards  poetry  in  particular,  that  age  ran  to 
length,  to  extravagance,  to  redundance.  This  is 
true  of  almost  all  the  Elizabethan  poetry  except 
in  what  is  perhaps  its  finest  flower,  its  lyrics ;  and 
even  in  these,  taken  collectively  and  not  singly, 
the  same  quality  is  found  in  their  superabundant 
profusion.  The  tradition  of  endlessness  in  poems 
was  indeed  not  new ;  it  was  an  inheritance  from 
the  Middle  Ages.  The  romances  of  the  thirteenth 
and  fourteenth  centuries  handed  on  the  quality  of 
exorbitant  length  to  the  romantic  epics  of  the  six- 
teenth. But  the  new  age  bettered  the  example,  and 
in  this  one  point  unhappily  learned  no  lesson  from 
its  classical  models.  With  regard  to  no  time  are 
the  lines  addressed  by  Tennyson  to  the  ancient 
poets  more  appropriate : 

You  should  be  jubilant  that  you  flourished  here 

Before  the  love  of  letters,  overdone, 

Had  swampt  the  sacred  poets  with  themselves. 

The  Roman  de  la  Rose  is  often  quoted  as  an  instance 
of  the  mediaeval  extravagance.  But  its  twenty-two 
thousand  lines  are  a  modest  figure  compared  with 
the  thirty-five  thousand  of  the  Orlando  Innamorato 
and  the  forty  thousand  of  the  Orlando  Furioso.  The 
earlier  Italian  Renaissance,  with  its  slenderer  re- 
sources and  its  purer  taste,  had  kept  within  the 
bounds  of  the  ancient  precedent.  The  Divina 
Commedia  is  shorter  than  the  Iliad  y  the  Teseide  is 


88  SPENSER 

the  same  length  as  the  Aeneid.  Spenser  in  the 
Faerie  Queene  proposed  to  himself  to  outdo  Ariosto, 
as  much  as  Ariosto  had  outdone  all  his  predecessors. 
For  this  intention  of  his  we  have  express  evidence. 
Harvey,  who  from  his  narrow  classical  prejudices, 
as  well  as  from  his  severer  taste,  disliked  the  whole 
scheme  of  the  poem,  and  would  have  recalled  poetry 
from  the  extravagances  of  chivalrous  romance  to  a 
more  antique  or  more  modern  concentration,  wrote 
to  Spenser  in  1580  in  these  words:  "The  Orlando 
Furioso  you  will  needs  seem  to  emulate  and  hope  to 
overgo,  as  you  flatly  professed  yourself  in  one  of 
your  last  letters."  But  apart  from  any  particular 
ambition  to  produce  a  larger  poem  than  had  hitherto 
been  known,  Spenser  possessed  the  terrible  Eliza- 
bethan fluency  to  a  degree  beyond  all  his  contem- 
poraries. Under  the  stimulus  of  his  example, 
reinforcing  the  instinct  for  profusion  which  is  the 
note  of  the  whole  period,  this  torrent  of  poetic 
fluency  poured  on  until  the  language  sank  exhausted 
under  it.  Then,  and  not  till  then,  the  inevitable 
and  wholesome  reaction  came  towards  precision  and 
succinctness.  That  reaction  was  powerfully  aided 
by  the  strenuous  scholarship  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  by  the  impression  made  throughout 
the  whole  republic  of  letters  by  the  French  classical 
school.  Moderation,  sobriety,  clarity  became  the 
aim  of  poets ;  and  limits  were  set  to  the  length 
as  well  as  to  the  scope  of  poems  which  the  general 


POETIC   REDUNDANCE  89 

sense  of  later  times  has  accepted  as  proper.  The 
Paradise  Lost  reverts  to  the  scale  of  the  Aeneid. 
Even  in  the  nineteenth  century  the  most  fluent 
and  melodious  of  modern  English  poets  kept,  by 
instinct  or  judgment,  within  the  same  limits.  The 
Life  and  Death  of  Jason  and  the  Story  of  Sigurd  the 
Volsung  are,  for  all  their  copiousness  and  even 
diffuseness,  each  a  little  shorter  than  Milton's 
epic. 

Yet  Spenser's  instinct,  like  that  of  all  great  artists 
as  regards  their  own  art,  was  in  the  main  sound  ;  for 
it  is  the  mass  and  volume  of  his  poetry,  not  less  than 
its  lavish  and  intricate  beauty,  that  gives  him  his 
place  and  importance  among  the  poets.  He  has 
been  a  vast  quarry  and  playground  for  generation 
after  generation  of  poets :  like  the  Precious  Strand 
in  his  own  poem,  a  land 

Bestrewed  all  with  rich  array 
Of  pearls  and  precious  stones  of  great  assay, 
And  all  the  gravel  mixed  with  golden  ore. 

He  is  the  most  inexhaustible  and,  in  a  way,  the  most 
various  of  the  English  poets.  All  his  successors 
have  loved,  admired,  plundered,  imitated  him  ;  Mil- 
ton and  Pope,  Wordsworth  and  Keats,  a  hundred 
others ;  not  one  but  has  dug  in  that  gravel  and 
brought  away  golden  ore  from  it  for  his  own  use. 
In  him  they  found  that  "  enormous  bliss "  which 


90  SPENSER 

Milton,  in  a  phrase  of  daring  felicity,  ascribes  to 
his  Earthly  Paradise : 

A  wilderness  with  thicket  overgrown 

Grotesque  and  wild  :  and  overhead  upgrew 

Insuperable  height  of  loftiest  shade, 

Cedar  and  pine  and  fir  and  branching  palm, 

A  silvan  scene,  and  as  the  ranks  ascend 

Shade  above  shade,  a  woody  theatre 

Of  stateliest  view.     Yet  higher  than  their  tops 

The  verdurous  wall  of  Paradise  upsprung, 

And  higher  than  that  wall  a  circling  row 

Of  goodliest  trees  loaden  with  fairest  fruit, 

Blossoms  and  fruits  at  once  of  golden  hue, 

Appeared,  with  gay  enamell'd  colours  mixt 

On  which  the  sun  more  glad  impressed  his  beams 

Than  in  fair  evening  cloud,  or  humid  bow 

When  God  hath  showered  the  earth  :  so  lovely  seemed 

That  landscape. 

Over  and  over  again,  as  one  plunges  through  the 
depths  of  that  wilderness — 

A  wilderness  of  sweets,  for  nature  here 
Wantoned  as  in  her  prime  and  played  at  will 
Her  virgin  fancies — 

one  comes,  scarcely  with  surprise,  on  phrases  and 
passages  that  might  be  those  of  our  greatest  poets 
in  their  most  superb  and  characteristic  manner.  It 
is  impossible  here,  though  it  would  be  fascinating, 
to  pursue  this  into  detail ;  but  two  or  three  in- 
stances will  show  what  I  mean. 

Scarcely  had  Phoebus  in  the  glooming  East 
Yet  harnessed  his  fiery-footed  team  : 


POETIC  FLEXIBILITY  91 

that  is  Shakespeare,  the  Shakespeare  of  Romeo  and 
Juliet. 

And  taking  usury  of  time  forepast 

Fit  for  such  ladies  and  such  lovely  knights  : 

that  is  Shakespeare   again,  the   Shakespeare  of  the 
Sonnets. 

Many  an  Angel's  voice 
Singing  before  the  eternal  Majesty 
In  their  trinal  triplicities  on  high  : 

that  is  the  younger  voice  of  Milton. 

And  ever  and  anon  the  rosy  red 
Flasht  thro'  her  face  : 

one  might  fancy  that  the  unmistakeable  note  and 
accent  of  Tennyson. 

This  immense  poetic  flexibility,  this  amazing  pro- 
fusion and  variety  in  style  as  well  as  in  language — 
for  in  his  vocabulary,  too,  Spenser  is  copious  beyond 
the  common  copiousness  of  the  Elizabethans — is  a 
poetical  quality  of  rare  value ;  it  is  not  of  the 
essence,  and  does  not  imply  the  quality,  of  a  supreme 
poet.  As  poetry  produces  its  greatest  effects  through 
few  and  simple  words,  so  some  of  the  greatest  poets 
have  been  scrupulously  frugal  in  their  language,  and 
their  style  has  been  simple  to  austerity.  Higher 
than  the  verdurous  wall  of  Paradise,  higher  than  the 
encircling  fruit-laden  trees,  is  the  secret  hill-top 
where  the  Muse  sits  among  her  chosen,  and  gives 


92  SPENSER 

them,  as  Milton  says,  large  prospect  into  the  nether 
empire. 

As  some  rich  tropic  mountain,  that  infolds 
All  change,  from  flats  of  scattered  palms 
Sloping  thro'  five  great  zones  of  climate,  holds 
His  head  in  snows  and  calms. 

The  image  of  perfection  which  art  condenses  out  of 
the  flying  vapours  of  the  world  may  be  only  blurred 
and  dispersed  by  copiousness  of  invention  and  splen- 
dour of  ornament :  so  hard  is  it  for  a  rich  man  to 
enter  into  the  kingdom. 

To  compare  one  great  artist  with  another  is  often 
futile,  and  not  seldom  misleading ;  but  such  com- 
parison may  be  more  suggestive,  and  is  less  dan- 
gerous, when  there  can  be  no  question  of  setting 
the  two  against  one  another.  So  far  as  there  can 
be  any  analogy  between  arts  so  wholly  different  as 
those  of  poetry  and  history,  Spenser  might  be  called 
the  English  Livy.  In  both  you  have  the  same 
fluency  and  melodiousness,  the  same  power  of  hand- 
ling language  on  an  immense  scale  with  unexhausted 
elasticity.  Both  deliberately  set  themselves  to  outdo, 
in  scale  and  volume,  what  had  hitherto  been  done 
in  a  special  field  of  literature,  and  succeeded  in 
achieving  their  purpose.  Both  chose  a  subject- 
matter  of  great  intricacy,  involving  many  tedious 
passages  and  much  repetition ;  neither  ever  tires  of 
repeating  himself,  or  seems  to  lose  interest  in  what 
he  is  doing.  Doubt  has  been  expressed  whether,  if 


SPENSER   AND   LIVY  93 

the  Faerie  Queene  had  been  completed,  any  reader 
would  ever  have  got  to  the  end  of  it ;  the  same 
apprehension  may  be,  and  indeed  has  been,  hinted 
at  as  regards  the  one  hundred  and  seven  lost  books 
of  the  Historiae  ab  Urbe  Condita.  Both  authors 
were  possessed  by  the  greatness  of  a  floating  and 
imperfectly  grasped  ideal ;  Rome  to  Livy,  chivalry 
to  Spenser,  mean  all  that  is  noble  and  glorious, 
but  their  power  of  hard  thought  is  not  great,  and 
they  are  often  found  draping  in  their  stately  and 
musical  rhetoric  not  only  commonplaces,  but  ab- 
surdities. Innovators  and  conquerors  in  the  field 
of  letters,  they  were  at  the  same  time  impassioned 
though  not  profound  or  accurate  lovers  and  students 
of  the  earlier  and  purer  national  literature.  They 
gave  a  new  copiousness,  a  new  range  and  flexibility 
to  their  language ;  but  to  the  eyes  of  scholars  and 
critics  they  often  made  wild  work  of  it.  The 
Patavinity  which  was  reproached  in  Livy  has  its 
analogy  in  Spenser,  whose  use  of  the  Chaucerian 
language  and  idiom  is  extraordinarily  erratic,  and 
whose  archaism,  while,  according  to  the  testimony 
of  Fuller,  it  impaired  his  popularity  and  even  dimin- 
ished his  sales,  is  so  inaccurate  as  to  fill  scientific 
students  of  language  with  a  feeling  little  short  of 
horror.  Both  he  and  Livy  were  borne  on  through 
their  immense  task  not  merely  by  fluency  and 
enthusiasm,  but  by  a  love  of  commonplace  moralis- 
ing which  was  inexhaustible,  and  by  an  almost 


94  SPENSER 

complete  absence  of  humour.  Livy  never  felt  that 
his  story  was  flat ;  Spenser  never  felt  that  his 
romanticism  was  absurd.  No  one  who  had  the 
gift  of  laughter,  who  felt  the  comedy  of  life,  could 
have  gone  gravely  on  through  the  third  book  of 
the  Faerie  Queene.  Over  and  over  again  it  moves 
a  smile  in  the  reader,  but  never  once  in  the  writer. 
In  this  book,  it  is  true,  there  occur  the  only  two 
passages  in  the  whole  poem  which  it  is  possible  to 
regard  as  intentionally  humorous.  There  is  some- 
thing like  a  flicker  of  amusement  in  the  description 
of  Britomartis  and  her  nurse  at  church  in  the  second 
canto ;  but  such  humour  as  there  is  in  the  stanza  is 
more  probably  unconscious  : — 

Early  the  morrow  next,  before  that  day 

His  joyous  face  did  to  the  world  reveal, 

They  both  uprose  and  took  their  ready  way 

Unto  the  Church,  their  prayers  to  appeal 

With  great  devotion,  and  with  little  zeal : 

For  the  fair  Damsel  from  the  holy  herse 

Her  love-sick  heart  to  other  thoughts  did  steal ; 

And  that  old  Dame  said  many  an  idle  verse 

Out  of  her  daughter's  heart  fond  fancies  to  reverse. 

One  can  fancy  with  what  an  exquisite  blending  of 
fun  and  tenderness  Chaucer  would  have  treated  the 
scene.  The  other  passage  is  where  the  Squire  of 
Dames,  in  the  seventh  canto,  tells  the  story  of  the 
three  women  who  had  repelled  his  advances.  In 
it  Spenser  a-pprend  d'etre  fif  with  rather  calamitous 
results.  The  story  itself  is  a  traditional  fabliau^  a 


THE   ANTIQUE   WORLD  95 

piece  of  ponderous  mediaeval  wit.  It  is  incorporated 
rather  than  assimilated  by  Spenser :  its  proper  place 
is  in  the  Moyen  de  Parvenir,  not  in  the  Faerie 
Queene,  where  it  is  strikingly  out  of  tone  with 
its  surroundings.  "  Thereat  full  heartily  laughed 
Satyrane,"  we  are  told :  he  may  have  done  so,  but 
probably  no  reader  of  the  poem  has  ever  felt  inclined 
to  follow  his  example. 

So  too,  with  his  feeling  about  the  past  and  his 
attitude  towards  his  own  age.  Following  the 
common  fashion  of  his  period,  which  was  indeed 
more  or  less  the  common  fashion  of  human  nature, 
he  is  perpetually,  even  to  weariness,  insisting  on  the 
degeneracy  of  modern  times,  on  the  vices  of  civilisa- 
tion, the  decay  of  chivalry,  the  treachery  and  in- 
gratitude of  courts.  "  O  goodly  usage  of  these 
antique  times,  in  which  the  sword  was  servant  unto 
right  :  "  this  is  a  theme  on  which  he  is  perpetually 
embroidering,  much  as  Orlando  (not  Ariosto's 
Orlando,  Shakespeare's)  eulogises  "the  constant 
service  of  the  antique  world,  when  service  sweat  for 
duty,  not  for  meed."  He  is  fond  of  thinking  of  his 
romantic  imaginary  world,  "  this  delightful  land  of 
faerie,"  as  he  truly  calls  it,  as  though  it  were  some 
golden  age  that  had  actually  existed  in  the  past,  when 

Antique  age,  yet  in  the  infancy 
Of  time,  did  live  then  like  an  innocent. 

He  was  not  only  a  romantic  dreamer  and  student, 


96  SPENSER 

but  a  man  of  large  and  disappointed  ambitions.  In 
a  famous  passage  in  his  Mother  HubbercTs  Tale  he 
draws,  with  mordant  truth,  and  in  swift  brilliant 
couplets  worthy  of  Pope  himself,  the  wretchedness 
of  a  courtier's  life  : 

So  pitiful  a  thing  is  suitor's  state  ! 
Most  miserable  man,  whom  wicked  fate 
Hath  brought  to  court,  to  sue  for  had-ywist, 
That  few  have  found,  and  many  one  hath  missed  ! 
Full  little  knowest  thou  that  hast  not  tried 
What  hell  it  is  in  suing  long  to  bide  : 
To  lose  good  days  that  might  be  better  spent, 
To  waste  long  nights  in  pensive  discontent, 
To  speed  to-day,  to  be  put  back  to-morrow, 
To  feed  on  hope,  to  pine  with  fear  and  sorrow, 
To  have  thy  prince's  grace,  yet  want  her  peers', 
To  have  thy  asking,  yet  wait  many  years, 
To  fret  thy  soul  with  crosses  and  with  cares, 
To  eat  thy  heart  through  comfortless  despairs, 
To  fawn,  to  crouch,  to  wait,  to  ride,  to  run, 
To  spend,  to  give,  to  want,  to  be  undone. 

His  View  of  the  Present  State  of  Ireland  shows 
him  on  this  side  of  his  nature,  the  keen,  hard,  not 
over-scrupulous  Puritan  politician.  In  the  prologue 
to  the  fifth  book  of  the  Faerie  Queene  he  sets  forth 
a  sort  of  philosophy  of  history,  in  which  the  gor- 
geous language  and  versification  give  an  imposing 
semblance  of  coherence  to  what  is  in  effect  a  com- 
bination of  the  romantic  cry,  that  glory  and  loveli- 
ness have  passed  away,  with  an  ecstatic  eulogy  of 
Tudor  absolutism.  The  Platonic  doctrine  of  the 
Great  Year  is  there  used  with  extraordinary  effect  to 


SPENSER   AND   PLATONISM          97 

enforce  the  progressive  degeneracy  of  the  world  ; 
but  he  does  not,  like  Virgil  in  the  fourth  Eclogue, 
regard  the  vast  cycle  as  nearing  its  close,  and  a  new 
golden  age  in  prospect ;  the  movement  is  still  on  its 
downward  arc  :  and  poetry  itself  is  the  anodyne 
rather  than  the  vital  function  of  life.  It  is  just  this 
want  of  touch  between  art  and  life  that  prevents 
Spenser,  with  all  his  poetical  gift  and  accomplish- 
ment, from  taking  a  place  in  the  first  rank  of  poets. 
"  This,"  he  says  himself  in  another  of  these  pro- 
logues into  which  he  put  his  deepest  thought,  or 
what  he  took  for  thought, 

Of  some  the  abundance  of  an  idle  brain 
Will  judged  be,  and  painted  forgery  : 

and  such  indeed  is  the  matured  judgment  of  pos- 
terity. But  abundance  has  never  been  more  inex- 
haustible, or  forgery  more  magnificently  painted. 
Like  his  own  magic  crystal  devised  by  Merlin, 

It  round  and  hollow-shaped  was 
Like  to  the  world  itself,  and  seemed  a  world  of  glass. 

Into  that  crystal  we  may  still  plunge  our  eyes 
with  ever  renewed  fascination. 

The  Platonism  which  is  expressly  set  forth  in 
many  passages  like  that  which  I  have  cited,  and  in 
whole  poems  like  the  Hymns  to  Heavenly  Love  and 
Heavenly  Beauty,  was  the  side  of  Greek  literature 
which  appealed  most  strongly  to  the  Renaissance. 
It  satisfied,  and  fed  to  a  greater  intensity,  their  sense 

G 


98  SPENSER 

of  vastness,  their  intoxication  with  language,  their 
longing  to  transcend  all  limits.  It  is  the  only  side 
of  Greece  which  had  a  visible  influence  on  Spenser 
himself.  He  was,  according  to  contemporary  testi- 
mony which  may  be  taken  for  what  it  is  worth,  "  per- 
fect in  the  Greek  tongue  "  ;  an  accomplished  scholar, 
that  is  to  say,  according  to  the  standard  of  what  was 
in  England  not  an  age  of  high  or  severe  scholarship. 
But  the  distinctively  Greek  quality  is  wholly  absent 
from  his  poetry  ;  he  is,  in  that  sense  of  the  terms, 
a  romantic  and  not  a  classic.  This  is  patent  as 
regards  the  whole  tone  and  colour  of  his  poetry  ; 
and  even  for  traces  of  any  influence  on  him  from 
Homer,  from  the  Greek  lyrists,  or  from  the  Attic 
tragedians  we  may  search  through  him  in  vain.  The 
only  specific  translations  or  adaptations  from  the 
Greek  that  are  to  be  noted  throughout  the  Faerie 
Queene  are  from  Grseco-Roman  epigrams  in  the 
Anthology,  and  these  he  very  likely  knew  only  in 
Latin  versions.  Among  the  Greek  poets  proper,  he 
seems  scarcely  to  have  gone  back  beyond  Theocritus. 
The  Greek  clarity,  the  Greek  purity,  were  alien 
from  his  luxurious  romantic  temperament.  This  is 
not  said  in  disparagement ;  for  he  too  had  heard 
the  Muses  singing,  though  not  on  the  mountain  or 
in  seven-gated  Thebes ;  and  we  can  hardly  wish 
him  to  have  been  other  than  he  was. 

A  great  deal   of  well-meant  nonsense   has  been 
talked  about  Spenser's  purity,  in  the  other  sense  of 


SPENSER   AND   ARIOSTO  99 

that  ambiguous  word.  He  was  a  poet  of  high  if 
rather  vague  and  sentimental  idealisms.  The  scope 
of  the  Faerie  Queene  is  expressly  stated  by  him  to 
be  the  fashioning  twelve  moral  virtues.  But  its  end, 
he  says,  in  words  which  are  more  significant,  is  to 
fashion  a  gentleman.  There  is  a  profound  difference 
between  a  gentleman  and  a  saint ;  and  the  gentleman 
of  that  age,  in  Tennyson's  phrase,  hovered  between 
war  and  wantonness ;  he  inherited  the  corruption  of 
the  age  of  chivalry  as  well  as  the  rich  sensuousness 
of  the  Renaissance.  It  has  been  a  fashion  to  extol 
Spenser  at  the  expense  of  Ariosto.  But  the  light- 
heartedness,  the  gay  inconsequence,  of  the  Italian 
poet  is  combined  with  a  natural  goodness  quite  as 
great  as  that  underlying  Spenser's  rather  heavy  and 
forced  morality.  Ariosto  had  no  consciousness  of  a 
mission,  beyond  that  of  producing  an  endless  stream 
of  melodious  and  brilliant  poetry.  He  belongs  to  a 
time  before  the  Renaissance  had  sickened  of  its  own 
Palace  of  Art ;  he  accepted  life  in  a  large  way,  he 
saw  all  the  humour  and  beauty  and  brightness  of  it. 
The  beauty  of  goodness  always  appeals  to  him.  His 
Bradamante  is  as  pure  as  Britomartis,  and  ten  times 
more  loveable.  He  has  no  sentimental  illusions 
about  his  world  of  knights  and  ladies ;  but  he 
frankly  thinks  it  a  very  good  and  beautiful  world. 
The  gran  bonth  di  cavalieri  antichi  is  a  thing  about 
which  he  is  quite  in  earnest.  It  is  not  without  sig- 
nificance that  his  greatest  enthusiasm  is  for  Vittoria 


ioo  SPENSER 

Colonna ;  a  very  different  kind  of  patroness  and 
heroine  from  Queen  Elizabeth.  He  certainly  makes 
no  parade  of  morals.  But  with  one  or  two  excep- 
tions, there  is  hardly  anything  in  the  Orlando  Furioso 
that  is  not  suitable  to  be  read  aloud,  even  according 
to  the  taste  of  the  present  day ;  the  same  cannot 
be  said  of  the  Faerie  Queene.  And  when  Spenser 
lapses  into  sensuousness,  it  is  with  a  certain  clumsi- 
ness from  which  Ariosto  was  saved,  not  by  a  higher 
ideal,  but  by  a  more  refined  and  educated  taste.  In 
Spenser,  as  in  so  much  English  art — as  in  so  much 
English  work  beyond  the  sphere  of  art — there  is  a 
trace  left  of  the  insular  grossness,  a  strain  of  some- 
thing a  little  forced  and  exaggerated.  He  is  hardly 
of  the  centre. 

But  the  centre  had  for  the  time  been  lost.  An 
iron  age  had  displaced  the  golden  time  of  Raphael 
and  Ariosto  and  Erasmus.  The  brave  attempt  of 
Humanism  to  breathe  fresh  life  into  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  carry  the  old  world  alive  and  unbroken 
into  the  new  age,  had  been  made  and  had  failed. 
The  religious  wars  broke  out  before  the  middle 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  Thenceforth  the  whole 
of  life  became  one  vast  field  of  battle  between 
the  revolutionary  Reformation  and  the  Catholic  re- 
action. These  bitter  enemies  had  one,  and  but  one, 
disastrous  feature  in  common,  a  fanatical  hatred 
of  great  and  humane  art.  In  Italy  the  sunset  of 
the  Renaissance  lingered;  but  the  shadow  of  the 


THE   TEARS  OF  THE   MUSES      101 

Catholic  reaction  is  already  visible  in  Tasso's 
romantic  epic.  In  England  the  revolution  which,  in 
the  historian's  striking  words,  laid  its  foundations 
in  the  murder  of  the  English  Erasmus,  and  set  up  its 
gates  in  the  blood  of  the  English  Petrarch,  left  a  long 
heritage  of  sombre  restlessness,  of  doubt  and  gloom. 
It  has  often  been  remarked  as  strange,  even  as  unac- 
countable, that  throughout  the  earlier  years  of  the 
Elizabethan  age  there  is  an  all  but  universal  cry 
that  poetry  is  dead  or  dying,  that  barbarism  and 
ignorance  have  flooded  in.  The  Tears  of  the  Muses, 
published  by  Spenser  in  1591,  and  written  not  long 
before,  is  one  prolonged  complaint  of  this. 

Heaps  of  huge  words  uphoarded  hideously 
With  horrid  sound  though  having  little  sense, 

are  all,  he  says,  that  is  left  of  the  palace  of  poetry. 
The  truth  was  that,  in  her  secular  movement,  poetry 
was  breaking  up  and  transforming  herself.  A  new 
generation  was  already  at  the  doors,  one  which  was 
in  turn  to  sweep  up  and  put  away  the  Renaissance, 
as  the  Renaissance  had  swept  up  and  put  away  the 
Middle  Ages. 

It  was  not  only  at  the  doors,  but  within  them. 
Night's  candles  were  burnt  out,  and  jocund  day 
stood  tiptoe  on  the  misty  mountain  tops.  The 
world  was  moving  at  a  prodigious  speed,  and  poetry 
had  to  quit  her  ancient  seats,  to  whirl  and  follow 
the  sun.  The  year  1591  is  remarkable  in  letters, 


102  SPENSER 

not  only  for  the  Tears  of  the  Muses  volume,  but  for 
another  work  in  which  there  is  a  satirical  allusion  to 
the  Tears  of  the  Muses.  That  work  was  the  Mid- 
summer Nighfs  Dream.  Of  the  life  of  Nicholas 
Bottom  (who  has  been  called,  not  without  some 
colour  of  reason,  the  hero  of  that  play)  we  un- 
happily know  as  little  as  we  do  of  the  lives  of 
Autolycus'  aunts.  But  if  he  did  not  marry  till 
middle  life,  his  son  might  very  well  have  handled  a 
pike  at  Naseby. 

Thus  Spenser,  like  so  many  other  great  poets,  re- 
presents the  late  splendour  of  a  descending  and  fast 
disappearing  tradition.  The  realm  in  which  he  was 
so  great  an  innovator,  so  wide  an  explorer  and  con- 
queror, was  even  before  his  death  passing  into  other 
hands.  Much  of  his  work  has  faded  away  and 
become  obsolete ;  but  his  great  argosy  came  into 
harbour.  He  lives  effectively  in  a  few  sonnets,  in 
one  superb  ode,  and  in  the  Faerie  Queene. 

The  Epithalamion,  in  Johnson's  stately  phrase  of 
compliment,  "  it  were  vain  to  blame,  and  useless  to 
praise."  For  sustained  beauty  of  execution,  for 
melodiousness  in  which  the  most  melodious  of 
English  poets  excels  even  his  own  standard,  for 
richness  of  ornament  that  stops  just  short  of  ex- 
cess, and  does  not  either  blur  the  outline  or  clog 
the  movement,  it  easily  takes  the  first  place,  not 
only  among  Spenser's  own  lyrics,  but  among  all 
English  odes.  The  mechanism  of  the  verse  is 


THE   EPITHALAMION  103 

a  marvel  of  delicate  intricacy.  The  twenty-three 
long  undulating  stanzas  into  which  it  is  divided 
by  the  recurrent  but  perpetually  varying  refrain  are 
all  based  on  the  same  general  rhythmical  scheme  of 
subdivision,  but  with  variations  of  internal  structure 
devised  with  extreme  skill  to  prevent  monotony,  to 
give  the  play  and  freedom  of  a  live  organism.  It  is 
possible  to  read  the  poem,  even  to  be  familiar  with 
it,  and  not  to  recognise  until  after  more  minute 
inspection  that  the  normal  nineteen-line  stanza  is 
varied  with  three  other  forms  of  stanza,  two 
of  eighteen  and  one  of  seventeen  lines,  and  that 
the  arrangement  of  the  rhymes  has  further 
delicate  variations.  The  Ode  was  Spenser's  latest 
lyric,  written  after  his  hand  had  for  years  been 
occupied  on  the  large  decorative  canvas  of  the 
allegorical  epic.  It  was  written  for  a  personal 
occasion  : 

Take  these  lines,  look  lovingly  and  nearly, 
Lines  I  write  the  first  time  and  the  last  time. 
He  who  works  in  fresco  steals  a  hair-brush, 
Makes  a  strange  art  of  an  art  familiar, 
Fills  his  lady's  missal-marge  with  flowerets. 

From  it  he  returned  to  his  main  work,  to  the  Faerie 
Oueene;  and  to  his  main  work  we  may  now  turn. 
Edward  Phillips,  nearly  a  century  afterwards, 
speaks  of  it  as  "  being  for  great  invention  and  poetic 
height  judged  little  inferior,  if  not  equal,  to  the 


io4  SPENSER 

chief  of  the  ancient  Greeks  and  Latins,  or  the 
modern  Italians."  What  Phillips  said  or  thought 
would  itself  be  of  little  importance  ;  but  there  is 
reason  to  believe  that  the  judgment  he  speaks  of  is 
that  of  Milton. 


II 

IN  reading  the  Faerie  Queene,  as  in  reading  all 
poetry,  we  cannot  appreciate  it  duly  without  the 
study  and  the  effort  requisite  to  let  us  place  our- 
selves more  or  less  at  the  poet's  point  of  view,  to  let 
us  understand,  or  not  wholly  misunderstand,  what 
he  meant  by  poetry  and  what  poetry  meant  to  him. 
But  we  cannot  appreciate  it,  in  its  essential  quality 
as  poetry,  at  all,  unless  we  approach  it  with  an  un- 
clouded mind,  and  disengage  ourselves  from  com- 
mentaries and  theories.  The  child's  vision  must, 
if  it  were  possible,  be  combined  with  the  scholar's 
understanding.  This  is  a  hard  saying,  but  the  thing 
itself  is  hard.  The  course  lies  straight  and  narrow 
between  the  rock  and  the  whirlpool.  Appreciation 
only  comes  of  study ;  study  too  often  dims  and 
sophisticates  appreciation.  The  attempt  to  be  made 
here  must  be  not  to  lose  ourselves  either  in  a  mist 
of  theories,  or  in  a  quicksand  of  facts  ;  but  to  dis- 
engage, as  far  as  may  be,  the  poetical  quality  of  the 
poem  in  form  and  substance ;  to  estimate,  as  far  as 
may  be,  the  degree  to  which  it  actually  condenses, 
from  the  flying  vapour  of  language  and  life,  an 


io6  SPENSER 

image  of  perfection.    For  while  the  value  of  a  poem 
is  manifold,  its  value  as  poetry  is  just  this. 

Spenser  has  left  us  in  no  doubt  as  to  what  he 
meant  by  poetry  and  what  he  meant  to  do  in  his 
great  poem.  It  is  a  subject  on  which  he  is  never 
tired  of  discoursing.  He  recurs  to  it  over  and  over 
again,  both  in  his  elaborate  prefaces  and  introduc- 
tions, and  more  incidentally  in  many  passages  of  the 
Faerie  Queene  itself.  The  loose  construction  and 
leisurely  movement  of  the  poem  give  him  full  oppor- 
tunity for  personal  digressions  and  passages  of  homi- 
letic  or  imaginative  exposition.  In  these  expositions 
of  his  doctrine  and  practice  there  is  the  same  melo- 
dious fluency  which  is  the  primary  quality  of  his 
poetry  itself ;  the  same  fecundity  of  illustration  and 
ornament,  the  same  lofty  if  somewhat  vague  and 
inconsequent  idealism.  The  image  of  perfection 
which  he  set  himself  to  embody  was,  in  his  own 
words,  that  of  a  noble  person  fashioned  in  virtuous 
and  gentle  discipline.  It  was  life  at  its  utmost 
height  and  richness.  Before  it  lay  the  whole  pageant 
of  the  world,  the  kingdom  and  the  power  and  the 
glory  of  it.  "  In  that  Faery  Queen,"  he  says,  in 
words  which  for  him  are  unusually  precise,  "  I  mean 
glory."  This  word  of  glory  is  the  keynote  of  the 
whole  Renaissance ;  the  glory  of  discovery,  of  con- 
quest, of  possession,  of  mastery.  The  achievement 
of  this  glory  was  "  virtue  "  ;  the  virtue  of  the  states- 
man, the  ruler,  and  the  soldier,  enlarged  by  liberal 


THE   FAERIE   QUEENE  107 

studies  and  bathed  in  the  splendours  of  romance. 
The  twelve  moral  virtues,  to  the  glorification  of 
which  the  twelve  books  of  the  Faerie  Queene  were 
to  be  devoted,  were  all  summed  up  in  the  crowning 
virtue  of  magnificence ;  and  this  "  magnificence " 
is  almost  the  same  thing  as  "courtesy,"  courtiership, 
the  conduct  of  life  by  the  masters  of  the  world,  lords 
over  the  five  senses  and  the  visible  earth.  Such 
glory  was  transitory,  like  this  world  itself;  but  it 
was  the  nearest  approach  which  this  world  gave  to 
immortality. 

The  vehicle  chosen  by  Spenser  to  set  forth  his 
vision  of  the  world's  glory  was  that  of  the  chivalrous 
romance.  The  Faerie  Queene  is  not  an  epic ;  both 
in  its  author's  genius  and  in  its  own  purpose  it  is 
alien  from  the  epic  tension  and  concentration.  He 
speaks  of  following  Homer  and  Virgil ;  but  this  is 
because  the  Iliad  and  the  Aeneid  were  read  by  him, 
and  affected  him,  as  romances.  The  romantic  epic, 
as  it  had  been  lately  attempted  by  Tasso,  was  a 
hybrid  product,  destined  to  be  sterile.  Spenser 
does  not  seem  himself  to  notice  any  distinction  of 
kind  between  Tasso  and  Ariosto.  But  his  own 
poem  is  a  still  more  complex  hybridisation ;  it  is  the 
spirit  of  Tasso  working  on  the  method  of  Ariosto. 
The  Faerie  Queene  has  not,  and  was  not  meant  to 
have,  the  epic  unity,  the  epic  structural  and  organic 
composition.  It  has  no  story,  or  if  it  has,  the  story 
has  neither  beginning  nor  end,  and  does  not  really 


io8  SPENSER 

matter.  It  has  no  dramatic  life,  no  tragical  inter- 
play of  human  will  and  passion.  It  has  no  hero,  for 
its  hero  is  an  abstraction,  or  rather  a  shifting  series 
of  abstractions.  It  is  a  romance  wrapped  in  the 
imperial  robes  of  the  epic,  but  lacking  her  sceptre 
and  crown.  It  is  a  pageant  and  allegory  of  life, 
while  the  epic  is  the  imaginative  embodiment  of  life 
itself. 

All  poetry  is  an  allegory,  in  the  sense  that  it 
embodies,  in  concrete  symbols,  a  meaning  larger  and 
nobler  than  that  which  its  literal  words  convey.  In 
this  sense,  the  amount  of  allegory  in  a  poem  depends 
not  so  much  on  the  poet  as  on  the  reader.  Homer 
and  Virgil  were  allegorised,  both  in  ancient  and  in 
modern  times,  to  such  an  extent  that  their  true 
outlines  were  lost,  their  true  quality  as  poetry 
obscured,  though  it  was  still  instinctively  felt.  But 
in  Spenser  the  allegory  is  throughout  conscious 
and  purposed ;  it  is  of  the  structure  and  essence  of 
the  poem.  In  his  prefatory  letter  prefixed  to  the 
Faerie  Queene,  he  describes  it  in  set  terms  as  a  con- 
tinued allegory  ;  and  this  is  the  case.  But  his  specific 
use  of  allegory,  and  with  it  the  specific  quality  of 
the  poem,  was  determined  by  the  fact  that,  with 
immense  imagination  and  endless  fertility  of  inven- 
tion and  language,  he  had  neither  the  narrative  nor 
the  dramatic  gift.  He  has  little  power — one  might 
say  he  has  little  wish — of  telling  a  story  or  realising 
a  situation.  The  Pilgrim's  Progress  is  an  allegory 


THE   FAERIE   QUEENE  109 

more  expressly  and  closely  than  the  Faerie  Queene. 
But  Bunyan's  narrative  gift  is  so  certain,  his  dramatic 
instinct  is  so  fine,  that  the  allegorical  abstractions 
with  which  he  purports  to  be  dealing  take  flesh  and 
blood  on  them  almost  without  his  will,  and  become 
real  human  beings.  There  are  no  real  human  beings 
in  the  Faerie  Queene. 

The  amount  of  allegory  in  it  of  course  varies  very 
much,  as  does  its  quality  and  complexity.  In  its 
large  lines  the  poem  is  an  allegorising  of  abstrac- 
tions, of  virtues  or  vices,  of  physical  or  mental 
functions,  of  philosophical  or  theological  ideas,  even 
of  political  situations.  Each  book  allegorises  one 
of  the  virtues.  Many  of  the  episodes  are  elaborate 
and  detailed  allegories  on  their  own  account :  such 
as  the  long  and  tedious  description  of  the  human 
body  as  the  Castle  of  Alma  in  the  ninth  canto  of  the 
second  book,  or  the  siege  of  that  same  castle  at  the 
wards  of  the  five  senses  in  the  eleventh  canto.  Others 
follow  the  mediaeval  manner  more  closely.  An  im- 
personation like  Lady  Praise-Desire  in  the  House  of 
Temperance,  with  the  poplar-branch  in  her  hand,  or 
the  description  of  the  entrance  to  the  temple  of 
Venus,  with  its  porters  Doubt  and  Delay,  and  its 
gate  of  Good  Desert  guarded  by  the  giant  Danger, 
might  come  straight  from  the  Romaunt  of  the  Rose, 
and  belongs  to  a  tradition  which  never  had  been  very 
happy,  and  from  which  Chaucer  himself  had  long 
ago  decisively  broken  away.  This  is  hardly  allegory 


no  SPENSER 

at  all ;  still  less  so  are  those  parts  of  the  poem  which 
deal  with  contemporary  history  after  the  fashion  of 
the  roman  h  clef.  It  is  in  these  that  the  poetry  is  at 
its  lowest  temperature ;  they  are  not  so  much  poetry 
as  versified  politics.  Much  of  the  fifth  book  is  of 
this  kind.  The  trial  of  Duessa  before  Mercilla  is 
mere  pamphleteering.  All  that  is  needed  to  con- 
vert it  into  a  political  tract  is  to  replace  the  names ; 
to  speak  plainly  of  Mary  and  Elizabeth  instead  of 
calling  them  Duessa  and  Mercilla,  and  to  substitute 
for  the  names  of  Care  and  Zeal  those  of  Cecil  and 
Walsingham.  In  the  three  cantos  which  follow, 
even  this  slight  veil  is  dropped,  because  it  was  not 
really  worth  while  keeping  it  up.  Belgium,  Spain, 
Henry  of  Bourbon,  are  introduced  openly  under 
their  own  names.  The  poetic  imagination  ebbs  away, 
leaving  only  a  sort  of  bleached  rhetorical  framework. 
Even  the  language  becomes  little  removed  from  that 
of  prose.  Except  for  a  few  inversions  of  order 
brought  about  by  the  necessities  of  rhyme,  there  is 
stanza  after  stanza  that  has  nothing,  either  in  imagi- 
nation or  in  style,  to  distinguish  it  from  the  florid 
heavy  prose  of  that  period.  It  is  Spenser  become 
mechanical,  the  Spenserian  manner  become  a  trick. 
How  nobly  he  recovered  himself  later,  those  will 
not  need  to  be  reminded  who  have  followed  the 
poem  to  the  end — or  not  to  the  end,  for  there  is 
none,  but  to  the  point  where  it  was  broken  off  by 
the  poet's  death. 


THE   FAERIE   QUEENE  in 

There  is  a  natural  tendency  in  the  human  mind 
to  confuse  imagination  with  imagery.  The  difference 
between  them  is  that  between  creation  on  the  one 
hand  and  invention  on  the  other,  and  it  is  vital. 
Spenser  thought  (so  far  as  he  did  think)  in  images. 
His  inventiveness,  his  faculty  for  pouring  forth  an 
endless  stream  of  imagery,  is  unsurpassed,  just  as  is 
his  faculty  for  conveying  this  imagery  in  unfailingly 
fluent  and  melodious  language.  He  is  a  complete 
master  of  decorative  art,  so  far  as  this  very  fertility 
and  fluency  do  not,  as  we  may  think,  lead  him  to 
make  his  decoration  too  intricate,  to  overload  his 
ornament.  But  while  all  art  is  decoration,  it  is  not 
in  its  merely  decorative  quality  that  art  can  be  great 
art,  can  fully  realise  its  function.  To  do  this,  it 
must  rise  from  invention  to  creation.  Its  imagery 
must  be  transmuted  by  imagination;  it  must  not 
only  adorn,  but  interpret  and,  in  a  sense,  make  life. 

If  Spenser  is  not,  in  the  full  sense  of  the  term, 
one  of  the  first  order  of  poets,  it  is  because,  while  he 
does  possess  this  higher  gift  of  creative  and  inter- 
pretative imagination,  he  possesses  it  intermittently, 
capriciously,  and  imperfectly.  The  Faerie  Queene 
does  not  move.  It  lives,  but  hardly  with  full  life. 
It  is  not  that  his  poetry  does  not  represent  the  actual 
world.  No  poetry  does.  It  is  that  it  does  not 
create  a  world  more  real  than  the  actual  world. 
It  drifts,  at  the  suggestion  of  complex  influences, 
through  a  sea  of  dreams.  It  fluctuates  between 


ii2  SPENSER 

moral  allegory  and  unmoralised  romance,  now  swerv- 
ing into  passages  of  crude  realism,  and  again  soaring 
to  ideal  heights  of  imagination.  But  the  poet's 
genius  is  so  great,  his  resources  are  so  vast,  and  his 
handling  of  them  so  easy  and  adroit,  that  he  absorbs 
the  reader  into  his  own  dream.  His  fabric  rises 
into  the  air  like  an  exhalation ;  as  the  gleaming 
pageant  floats  and  passes  before  us,  we  are  hardly 
conscious,  any  more  than  we  are  conscious  in  actual 
dreaming,  of  its  inconsequence  and  unsubstantiality. 
Scenes  melt  into  one  another  ;  nothing  is  surprising. 
It  is  all  iridescent,  magnified,  wrapped  and  floating 
in  a  luminous  mist. 

In  the  last  canto  of  the  last  completed  book  of 
the  Faerie  Queene,  Spenser  himself  makes  a  claim 
for  the  poem  which  is  of  a  different  nature.  The 
image  of  the  epic,  with  its  high  imaginative  tension 
and  concentrated  creative  energy,  hung  before  him 
as  a  poetic  ideal;  but  it  became  in  his  hands,  like 
his  ideal  figures  and  scenes,  something  filmy,  elusive, 
and  unsubstantial.  In  this  passage  he  lays  claim  to 
unity  and  purpose  in  his  long  train  of  romantic 
imagery ;  and  does  so,  very  characteristically,  by 
means  of  a  new  piece  of  romantic  imagery  of  just 
the  same  texture  as  the  rest. 

Like  as  a  ship,  that  through  the  ocean  wide 
Directs  her  course  unto  one  certain  coast, 
Is  met  of  many  a  counter  wind  and  tide 
With  which  her  winged  speed  is  let  and  crost, 
And  she  herself  in  stormy  surges  tost, 


THE   FAERIE   QUEENE  113 

Yet,  making  many  a  board  and  many  a  bay, 
Still  winneth  way,  ne  hath  her  compass  lost ; 
Right  so  it  fares  with  me  in  this  long  way 
Whose  course  is  often  stayed,  yet  never  is  astray. 

Right  so  it  does  nothing  of  the  sort.  Even  had  he 
lived  to  catch  up  all  the  interlaced  or  floating  threads 
of  the  poem,  and  to  bring  them  out  to  a  conclusion, 
it  would  not  have  made  any  material  difference. 
We  are  not  in  the  least  interested  in  the  progress  of 
the  action  in  the  Faerie  Queene  ;  or  rather,  there  is 
no  progress  of  the  action  for  us  to  be  interested  in. 
It  is  difficult  to  remember,  as  we  read  it,  whom  we 
are  reading  about,  or  how  they  came  there.  They 
drop  out  and  reappear  capriciously ;  we  are  pleased 
to  meet  them,  we  half  think  we  have  seen  them 
before,  and  it  does  not  matter  when  they  are 
gone.  They  move  among  one  another,  weaving 
intricate  and  lovely  patterns,  and  as  the  pattern  still 
flows  out  of  the  loom,  "  his  web,  reeled  off,  curls 
and  goes  out  like  steam."  Into  these  chambers  of 
imagery  the  breath  of  fresh  outer  air  hardly  enters ; 
it  would  blow  the  whole  fabric  away. 

This  enchanted  atmosphere,  this  luminous  mist  of 
romantic  feeling  and  glittering  imagery,  pervades 
the  whole  poem.  But  it  varies  from  point  to  point, 
like  some  actual  vapour  that  collects  or  clears,  lifts 
or  drops,  under  light  variable  airs. 

Far  off  they  saw  the  silver-misty  morn, 
Rolling  her  smoke  about  the  royal  mount, 

H 


n4  SPENSER 

That  rose  between  the  forest  and  the  field. 
At  times  the  summit  of  the  high  city  flashed  : 
At  times  the  spires  and  turrets  half-way  down 
Pricked  thro'  the  mist ;  at  times  the  great  gate  shone 
Only,  that  opened  on  the  field  below; 
Anon,  the  whole  fair  city  had  disappeared. 

Sometimes  it  condenses  into  a  cloud  through  which 
we  move  heavily,  and  the  figures  loom  indistinct 
and  spectral.  Sometimes  a  rift  of  sky  blows  open, 
and  a  corner  of  the  landscape  is  seen  in  clear  day- 
light. In  these  little  clear  islets  we  may  find  what 
is  perhaps  Spenser  at  his  best,  though  not  at  his  most 
characteristic :  in  those  rare  and  pleasant  simpler 
touches  where  the  poetry  becomes  lucid  and  close 
to  life,  or  in  those  passages,  not  rare,  where  it  rises 
to  some  great  nobleness  of  expression,  some  great 
elevation  of  sentiment.  Spenser's  Chaucerianism 
was  no  mere  muddle  of  antiquarian  pedantry ;  it 
was  a  real  love  and  admiration,  a  poetical  sympathy 
that  makes  him  write  now  and  then,  for  a  few  lines 
together,  with  the  freshness  and  charm  of  Chaucer. 
If  I  may  venture  to  put  it  so,  he  sometimes  drops 
into  poetry.  When  he  has  almost  wearied  us  with 
Britomartis,  he  suddenly  writes  of  her  thus  : 

One  day,  whenas  she  long  had  sought  for  ease 
In  every  place,  and  every  place  thought  best, 
Yet  found  no  place  that  could  her  liking  please, 
She  to  a  window  came  that  opened  west, 
Towards  which  coast  her  love  his  way  addrest : 
There,  looking  forth,  she  in  her  heart  did  find 
Many  vain  fancies  working  her  unrest, 


THE   FAERIE   QUEENE  115 

And  sent  her  winged  thoughts  more  swift  than  wind 
To  bear  unto  her  love  the  message  of  her  mind. 

It  is  like  cool  water.  The  same  clear  simplicity 
comes  with  the  same  lovely  effect  in  many  single 
lines.  Calepine,  when  he  is  recovered  of  his  wounds, 
goes  out,  as  Palamon  or  Arcite  might  go,  "  to  take 
the  air  and  hear  the  thrushes'  song."  "  What  May- 
game  hath  misfortune  made  of  you  ? "  the  Amazon 
asks  Artegall  when  she  finds  him  in  prison,  touched 
by  surprise  to  forget  all  her  rhetoric.  In  the  beauti- 
ful pastoral  incident  which  fills  several  cantos  of  the 
sixth  book,  Spenser  reverts  not  only  to  the  free 
romantic  manner  of  the  Arcadia,  but  to  a  simpler, 
fresher  style  and  language  than  that  to  which  he  had 
wrought  himself  when  he  planned  to  make  his  poem 
not  only  a  romance  but  an  epic  and  an  allegory  of 
life. 

One  day,  as  they  all  three  together  went 
To  the  green  wood  to  gather  strawberries — 

how  unlike  this  is  to  the  highly-charged,  slowly- 
wheeling,  rich  verse  that  we  think  of  as  Spenserian  ! 

It  is  old  and  plain : 

The  spinsters  and  the  knitters  in  the  sun 
Do  use  to  chant  it :  it  is  silly  sooth 
And  dallies  with  the  innocence  of  love 
Like  the  old  age. 

Of  course  he  cannot  keep  it  up ;  the  traditions  of 
high  romance  must  be  observed ;  and  the  first  thing 
that  happens  in  the  wood  is  that  a  tiger  comes  out 


n6  SPENSER 

of  it,  "with  fell  claws  full  of  fierce  gormandise, 
and  greedy  mouth  wide -gaping  like  hell -gate." 
The  hero,  who  has  "  no  weapon  but  his  shepherd's 
hook  to  serve  the  vengeance  of  his  wrathful  will," 
at  once  fells  the  tiger  to  the  earth  with  it,  and 
before  the  formidable  beast  can  recover,  hews  off 
its  head — whether  with  the  shepherd's  hook  or  not, 
the  chivalrous  spirit  of  romance  does  not  pause  to 
inquire. 

And  just  as  Spenser's  genuine  love  and  admiration 
of  Chaucer  combine  with  the  instinctive  resurgence 
in  him,  as  in  all  the  poetry  of  his  age,  of  the  native 
lyrical  impulse,  to  make  him  write  now  and  then 
with  Chaucerian  freshness  and  simplicity,  so  his 
genuine  love  and  admiration  of  the  classics  make 
the  Faerie  Queene  in  many  passages  rise  to  an  almost 
classic  height.  In  the  flowing  loosely-woven  texture 
of  the  poem  there  are  many  lines  and  stanzas,  and 
even  whole  passages,  which  stand  out  from  the  rest 
in  virtue  of  a  concentration,  a  precision,  a  dignity 
which  are  the  qualities  of  the  classics.  It  would  be 
tedious  to  develop  this  point  by  large  illustration  ; 
and  in  any  case  the  search  and  the  selection  must 
be  made  by  each  reader  for  himself;  and  the  search 
is  delightful,  even  apart  from  the  added  delight  of 
recognition  or  discovery.  It  would  be  easy  to 
collect  and  dwell  upon  many  single  lines  that 
have  this  quality  of  exalted  beauty,  lines  like  the 
famous 


THE   FAERIE   QUEENE  117 

Glistering  in  arms  and  battailous  array  ; 
or 

Wasting  the  strength  of  her  immortal  age  ; 
or 

Spreading  pavilions  for  the  birds  to  bower. 

It  is  curious  to  notice  how  all  these  lines,  though 
they  were  not  chosen  in  order  to  bring  out  the 
point,  but  simply  for  their  own  sake,  are  parti- 
cipial ;  they  convey  an  image  incidentally  in  the 
course  of  the  main  movement  of  the  passages  in 
which  they  are  set.  This  is  true  of  the  poem  gene- 
rally. It  is  like  the  English  architecture  of  the 
same  period,  still  Gothic  in  main  substance  and 
structure,  but  enriched  by  classic  detail.  Its  classi- 
cism is  decorative,  not  constructional.  This  is  the 
case  likewise  with  the  longer  passages  or  whole 
stanzas  which  reach,  or  suggest,  the  classic  manner. 

Both  roof  and  floor  and  walls  were  all  of  gold, 

But  overgrown  with  dust  and  old  decay, 

And  hid  in  darkness,  that  none  could  behold 

The  hue  thereof;  for  view  of  cheerful  day 

Did  never  in  that  house  itself  display, 

But  a  faint  shadow  of  uncertain  light : 

Such  as  a  lamp  whose  life  does  fade  away, 

Or  as  the  moon,  clothed  with  cloudy  night, 

Does  shew  to  him  that  walks  in  fear  and  sad  affright. 

That  is  the  classical  manner ;  not  that  of  the  great 
classics,  it  is  true,  not  like  the  aXX'  enl  vv£  dXo»/  of 
Homer  or  the  ibant  obscuri  of  Virgil ;  it  is  a  diluted 
secondary  classicism  more  like  that  of  Apollonius  or 
Statius.  But  the  stanza  is  only  one  out  of  three 


n8  SPENSER 

in  which  the  House  of  Riches  is  described  ;  the  other 
two,  which  precede  and  follow  it,  are  in  the  loaded 
intricate  manner  which  is  normal  to  Spenser,  and 
which  is  in  direct  antithesis  to  the  classical.  Nor 
would  it  be  possible,  even  if  the  poet  had  wished  to 
do  so,  to  adapt  the  classical  manner  to  the  imagina- 
tive substance  of  the  poem  (if  substance  it  might  be 
called  that  substance  had  none),  which  is  that  of  a 
vast  pageant  moving  through  a  dream. 

This  pageant-like  or  dream-like  quality  makes 
the  Faerie  Queene  approximate  to  a  masque  or 
interlaced  series  of  masques  rather  than  to  an  epic. 
There  is  no  difference  of  plane  between  the  figures 
and  the  ornament ;  for  the  figures  are  the  orna- 
ment. "  You  shamefast  are,  but  shamefastness  itself 
is  she,"  says  Alma  to  Guyon ;  she  might  equally 
well  have  put  it  the  other  way.  The  episodes  nearly 
always  break  off  in  the  middle,  or  rather,  do  not  so 
much  break  off  as  melt  away.  It  is  singular  how 
many  of  the  cantos  end  on  this  note  of  vanishing  : 

Eftsoons  he  fled  away  and  might  nowhere  be  seen — 
or 

The  while  false  Archimage  and  Atin  fled  apace — 
or 

And  from  Prince  Arthur  fled  with  wings  of  idle  fear — 

or  most  strikingly,  and  with  most  studied  and  splen- 
did effect,  in  the  wonderful  line  which  closes  the 
Mutability  cantos, 

And  Nature's  self  did  vanish,  whither  no  man  wist. 


THE  FAERIE   QUEENE  119 

It  is  a  piece  of  deliberate  art  with  Spenser  that  he 
hardly  ever  finishes  a  story.  He  does  finish  the  story 
of  Cambell  and  Canace  in  the  fourth  book,  and  makes 
a  sad  bungle  of  it.  The  variations  in  the  texture  of 
the  poem  are  given,  the  stages  in  its  movement  are 
marked,  chiefly  by  points  at  which  the  continuous 
pageantry,  like  a  stream  spreading  into  pools,  ex- 
pands, rather  than  concentrates,  into  set  pageants  of 
unusual  elaboration  and  magnificence.  The  Masque 
of  Cupid,  at  the  end  of  the  third  book,  is  the  best 
known  of  these,  as  it  is  perhaps  the  greatest. 
Almost  as  well  known  is  the  pageant  of  the  Months 
in  the  seventh  book.  Of  the  same  type,  though 
with  a  difference  of  subject  and  treatment,  is  the 
chronicle  of  the  kings  of  Britain,  a  sort  of  masque 
of  British  history,  towards  the  end  of  the  second 
book,  and  the  marriage  procession  of  the  rivers 
towards  the  end  of  the  fourth.  To  the  ninth, 
tenth,  and  eleventh  cantos  of  the  sixth  book,  which 
stand  quite  by  themselves,  some  further  reference 
will  be  made. 

So  much  it  is  indispensable  to  keep  in  view  with  re- 
gard to  the  quality  and  substance  of  the  F aerie  Queene 
as  poetry.  We  may  now  go  on  to  consider  with  a 
fuller  appreciation  the  metrical  vehicle  which  Spenser 
chose  for  it,  the  famous  Spenserian  stanza.  It  is  one 
of  the  four  great  English  metrical  forms  for  poetry 
written  on  a  large  scale ;  and  it  is  rightly  and  indis- 
solubly  connected  with  the  name  of  Spenser ;  for  he 


120  SPENSER 

both  introduced  it  and  perfected  it.  No  one  of  the 
other  three  metres  is  called  after  the  name  of  a 
single  poet.  Chaucer  invented  (or  to  all  intents 
and  purposes  invented)  two  of  them,  the  rhyme- 
royal  and  the  heroic  couplet.  The  former  of  the 
two  he  also  carried  to  perfection.  But  for  various 
reasons,  it  has  not  been  so  continuously  and  habitu- 
ally used  by  later  poets  as  the  other  three ;  and  to 
call  it  the  Chaucerian  verse  would  do  injustice  to 
Chaucer's  other  and  greater  invention :  for  though 
Chaucer's  crowning  masterpiece  is  in  the  former 
metre,  the  larger  part  of  his  mature  work,  and  that 
by  which  he  is  most  universally  known,  is  in  the 
latter.  The  heroic  couplet  itself  was  used  by 
Chaucer  with  consummate  skill,  and  established  by 
him  as  a  standard  form  of  English  verse.  But  it 
afterwards  underwent  great  changes  and  develop- 
ments. It  cannot  be  associated  exclusively  with  any 
poet's  name,  but  it  is  perhaps  associated  most  closely 
in  common  usage  with  a  later  age  and  with  the  shape 
it  took  in  the  hands  of  Dryden  and  Pope.  The  last 
of  the  four  dominant  forms  of  English  verse,  the 
unrhymed  decasyllabic,  has  also  passed  through 
many  phases  and  received  new  qualities  from  more 
than  one  great  poet.  But  the  Spenserian  verse  was 
not  only  created  and  established  by  Spenser,  but  left 
by  him  in  its  final  form.  It  has  never  gone  out  of 
use.  It  was  written  freely  through  both  the  seven- 
teenth and  the  eighteenth  centuries.  In  the  great 


THE   SPENSERIAN   STANZA         121 

renascence  of  English  poetry  a  hundred  years  ago  it 
occupied  a  leading  position.  Shelley,  Byron,  Scott, 
Keats,  all  used  it  largely.  None  of  them  gave  it 
any  new  quality :  and  it  still  remains  exactly  what 
Spenser  left  it. 

Technically  the  Spenserian  stanza  consists  of  the 
interlaced  double  quatrain  (what  metrical  treatises 
call  the  eight-line  ballad-stave)  which  was  introduced 
into  England  by  Chaucer,  with  the  addition  of  a 
twelve-syllabled  ninth  line  rhyming  with  the  eighth. 
But  this  addition  completely  changes  its  character ; 
it  gives  it  a  new  rhythm  and  a  new  balance,  and  one 
totally  unlike  that  of  any  form  of  verse  previously 
used.  Spenser's  stanza  is,  in  the  full  sense  of  the 
words,  a  fresh  creation.  Careful  scrutiny  may  indeed 
pick  out,  here  and  there  in  the  earlier  part  of  the 
Faerie  Queene,  a  stanza  in  which  the  ninth  line 
comes  as  a  sort  of  afterthought,  and  the  other  eight 
preserve  something  of  the  ballad-stave  cadence  ;  but 
these  are  few,  and  only  recognisable  when  one  looks 
for  them.  Normally  and  habitually  the  ninth  line 
is  felt  coming  through  the  whole  stanza,  which  im- 
plies it  and  converges  upon  it. 

Spenser  was  no  doubt  led  to  the  invention  of  his 
stanza  by  the  desire  to  find  an  English  form  of  verse 
which  should  be  the  equivalent,  and  a  little  more 
than  the  equivalent,  of  the  Italian  rhymed  octave. 
From  Boccaccio  to  Tasso,  the  ottava  rima  had 
reigned  undisputed  in  Italy  as  the  vehicle  for  the 


122  SPENSER 

heroic  romance  and  for  the  regular  epic.  It  was 
one  admirably -suited  to  the  genius  and  structure  of 
the  Italian  language.  But  it  did  not  accommodate 
itself  well  to  English,  nor  to  French,  in  which  the 
English  metricists  sought  their  models.  Chaucer 
instinctively  passed  by  the  metre  of  Boccaccio ; 
Spenser,  as  instinctively,  passed  by  the  metre  of 
Ariosto  and  Tasso.  Chaucer  syncopated  the  octave 
stanza  into  the  rhyme-royal,  Spenser  expanded  it 
into  the  Spenserian.  In  both  cases  the  effect  was  to 
produce  a  vehicle  that  was  more  romantic  and  com- 
plex ;  that  fell  short  possibly  of  the  serenity  and 
balance  of  the  Italian  octave,  but  gained  in  richness 
and  harmony.  The  long  swaying  rhythms  of  the 
new  stanza  were  exactly  suited  to  a  style  like 
Spenser's,  loaded  with  ornament  and  almost  sta- 
tionary in  movement.  It  allowed  him  full  ampli- 
tude ;  it  held,  it  even  invited  and  reinforced,  the 
quality  of  boundlessness  in  his  genius,  the  immense 
superflux  of  language  and  fancy.  It  is  worth  noting 
that  the  rhyme-royal  where  Spenser  uses  it,  in  the 
four  Hymns,  gives  something  of  the  effect  of  a  cur- 
tailed Spenserian ;  it  has  not  the  authentic  cadence. 
But  these  poems  were  written  after  he  had  invented 
and  begun  to  use  his  proper  medium. 

Like  most  metrical  forms,  the  Spenserian  stanza 
has  its  excellences  and  its  defects.  For  poetry 
which  consists  of  a  stream  of  pageants  it  is  exactly 
suited.  It  is  no  less  apt  as  a  vehicle  of  imaginative 


THE   SPENSERIAN   STANZA        123 

reflection,  for  thought  translating  itself  in  images. 
It  lends  itself  to  rich  effects  produced  by  accumu- 
lated touches.  When,  as  it  often  does,  it  swells  up 
to  the  very  end ;  or  when,  to  produce  a  different 
effect,  it  slowly  ebbs  off";  or  when,  as  is  equally 
characteristic  with  Spenser,  it  slides  forward  with 
equable  rhythms  till  near  the  end,  and  then,  in  the 
eighth  and  ninth  lines,  rises  into  a  great  crescendo 
and  storm  of  sound,  it  is  little  short  of  miraculous. 
To  embark  on  quotations  is  a  formidable  matter, 
but  just  one  instance  of  each  kind  of  effect  may  be 
given.  An  instance  of  the  first,  almost  too  well 
known,  but  still  endlessly  delightful  to  repeat,  is 
from  the  description  of  the  Garden  of  Acrasia  (II. 
xii.  71)  : 

The  joyous  birds,  shrouded  in  cheerful  shade, 
Their  notes  unto  the  voice  attempered  sweet : 
The  angelical  soft  trembling  voices  made 
To  the  instruments  divine  respondence  meet : 
The  silver-sounding  instruments  did  meet 
With  the  base  murmur  of  the  water's  fall : 
The  water's  fall,  with  difference  discreet, 
Now  soft,  now  loud,  unto  the  wind  did  call : 
The  gentle  warbling  wind  low  answered  to  all. 

As  an  instance  of  the  second  may  be  taken  a 
stanza  of  equal  beauty  and  celebrity,  the  famous 
invocation  to  Chaucer  (IV.  ii.  34),  with  its  singular 
likeness,  in  phrasing  and  rhythm  as  well  as  in  sub- 
stance, to  those  exquisite  verses  of  William  Morris 
which  come  as  the  envoi  to  the  Earthly  Paradise  : 


i24  SPENSER 

Then  pardon,  O  most  sacred  happy  spirit, 

That  I  thy  labours  lost  may  thus  revive 

And  steal  from  thee  the  meed  of  thy  due  merit 

That  none  durst  ever  whilst  thou  wast  alive  : 

And  being  dead,  in  vain  yet  many  strive  : 

Ne  dare  I  like  ;  but  thro'  infusion  sweet 

Of  thine  own  spirit  which  doth  in  me  survive 

I  follow  here  the  footing  of  thy  feet 

That  with  thy  meaning  so  I  may  the  rather  meet. 

For  an  instance,  finally,  of  the  third  kind,  we  may 
go  to  one  of  the  innumerable  combats  between  a 
knight  and  two  Paynims — mostly  in  common  form 
and  a  little  tedious,  but  in  this  case  lifted  to  a  new 
splendour  by  the  blaze  and  crash  of  the  final  line 
(II.  viii.  37): 

Horribly  then  he  gan  to  rage  and  rail 
Cursing  his  gods  and  himself  damning  deep. 
But  when  his  brother  saw  the  red  blood  rail 
Adown  so  fast,  and  all  his  armour  steep, 
For  very  fellness  loud  he  gan  to  weep, 
And  said  :  Caitiff,  curse  on  thy  cruel  hand 
That  twice  hath  sped  ;  yet  shall  it  not  thee  keep 
From  the  third  brunt  of  this  my  fatal  brand  : 
Lo  !  where  the  dreadful  Death  behind  thy  back  doth 
stand. 

Such  are  some,  and  only  some,  of  the  effects  of 
which  the  stanza  is  capable.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  often  drags  and  becomes  languid.  The  last  line 
sometimes  seems  pure  surplusage ;  sometimes  one 
may  say  the  same  of  more  than  the  last  line.  The 
thought,  and  even  the  imagery,  become  exhausted 
before  the  end  of  the  stanza  is  reached.  Spenser's 


THE   SPENSERIAN   STANZA         125 

fluency  is  unfailing ;  but  there  are  many  places 
where  the  fluency  becomes  mere  verbosity,  many 
where  the  stanza  seems  stuffed  out  with  anything 
that  comes  first  to  hand.  It  is  this  that  lies  at 
the  root  of  Spenser's  strange  lapses  into  bald  prose. 
He  recovers  from  them  swiftly,  but  there  they  are : 
in  single  lines  like 

Though  otherwise  it  did  him  little  harm ; 

or 

Then  very  doubtful  was  the  war's  event ; 
or 

But  the  rude  porter,  that  no  manners  had  ; 

and  even  more  markedly  in  some  longer  passages 
that  are  mere  untransmuted  lumps  from  the  debased 
prose  romances  of  the  period,  such  as, 

But  turn  we  now  back  to  that  lady  free 
Whom  late  we  left  riding  upon  an  ass ; 

or  the  amazing  account  of  her  adventures  given  by 
Priscilla  to  Calidore  in  the  second  canto  of  Book  VI. 
It  fills  eight  stanzas,  and  is  all  as  bad  as  can  be  ;  I 
will  only  give  one  gem  out  of  the  heap : 

Then,  as  it  were  to  avenge  his  wrath  on  me, 
When  forward  we  should  fare  he  flat  refused 
To  take  me  up  (as  this  young  man  did  see) 
But  forced  to  trot  on  foot,  and  foul  misused, 
Punching  me  with  the  butt-end  of  his  spear. 


126  SPENSER 

Doll  Tearsheet  might  talk  so  :  did  talk  so  in  fact,  the 
very  next  year,  in  the  squalid  but  powerful  scene 
where  she  makes  her  last  appearance  on  Shakespeare's 
stage. 

Finally,  as  a  vehicle  for  narrative  poetry,  the 
Spenserian  verse  is  inherently  faulty,  because  it  lacks 
speed.  Its  movement  is  not  progressive ;  it  is  like 
that  of  spreading  and  interlacing  circles.  Spenser 
was  no  doubt  naturally  without  that  rare  quality, 
the  narrative  gift ;  but  he  deliberately  (and  very 
likely  rightly)  chose  a  metrical  form  for  the  Faerie 
Queens  which  emphasised  this  deficiency.  The 
same  thing  is  true  of  the  stanza  as  used  by  other 
poets.  Compare  Keats's  two  masterpieces ;  how 
heavy,  how  struggling,  is  the  narrative  movement 
in  the  Eve  of  S*.  Agnes  when  set  beside  the  swift, 
clear  brightness  of  Lamia  /  or  compare  the  endless 
circumvolutions  of  Shelley  in  the  Revolt  of  Islam 
with  the  sense  of  life  and  movement  in  the  Witch 
of  Atlas.  Even  Byron,  the  swiftest  of  English 
poets,  becomes  slow  and  almost  languid  in  Childe 
Harold.  In  his  Don  Juan,  where  rapidity  was  essen- 
tial, he  abandoned  the  Spenserian  verse,  and  boldly 
launched  into  the  Italian  rhymed  octave,  though 
he  did  not  succeed  in  naturalising  it,  and  Don  Juan 
remains  a  long  metrical  tour  de  force.  And  if  we 
take  Byron  where  he  is  swiftest  and  most  himself 
— the  Byron  of  the  Giaour — the  difference  is  almost 
incredible. 


THE   SPENSERIAN   STANZA        127 

The  foremost  Tartar's  in  the  gap 
Conspicuous  by  his  yellow  cap — 

it  is  safe  to  say  that  Spenser,  or  any  one  writing  in 
the  Spenserian  manner,  would  have  spent  a  whole 
stanza  in  getting  over  the  ground  that  this  fierce 
swift  couplet  covers  in  a  single  stride.  Byron 
himself  could  hardly  have  done  otherwise ;  for  so 
essentially  is  the  Spenserian  stanza  Spenser's  creation, 
that  it  cannot  be  written  at  all  except  in  a  manner 
nearly  akin  to  his. 

This  perilous  fluency,  this  unbounded  melodious- 
ness, is  at  once  Spenser's  strength  and  his  weakness 
as  an  artist.  It  displeased  the  classicists  of  his  own 
time.  His  friend  Harvey  honestly  disliked  the 
Faerie  Queene,  and  said  so  roundly  to  Spenser  him- 
self. "  Hobgoblin  running  away  with  the  garland 
from  Apollo "  he  calls  it,  in  a  phrase  which  one 
can  hardly  fancy  Spenser  would  either  forgive  or 
forget.  He  sets  the  whole  thing  down,  rather 
petulantly,  to  some  foolish  ambition  in  Spenser  to 
outdo  Ariosto  on  his  own  lines.  Harvey's  opinions 
on  poetry  were  not  those  of  a  poet,  and  are 
perhaps  not  of  special  value.  But  in  this  instance 
he  expresses  the  feeling  not  merely  of  classicist 
pedantry,  but  of  classical  judgment.  Every  one 
knows  that  we  have  only  half  of  the  Faerie  Queene 
as  planned ;  that  it  was  to  have  extended  to  twelve 
books,  and  something  like  sixty  thousand  or  seventy 
thousand  lines.  What  is  not  so  widely  known,  or 


128  SPENSER 

at  least  so  clearly  remembered,  is  that  these  twelve 
books  were  only  the  first  part  of  a  still  more  gigantic 
scheme.  If  that  scheme  had  been  carried  out,  we 
should  have  had  a  poem,  or  a  mass  of  poetry,  of 
something  more  like  one  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand lines.  This  would  substantially  exceed  even  the 
sixty  thousand  couplets  into  which  the  Shah  Nameh, 
through  successive  accretions,  became  swollen  in  the 
hands  of  Firdausi  and  his  pupils  or  continuators. 
It  would  have  been  a  poem  which,  in  Lord  Cock- 
burn's  celebrated  phrase,  would  have  exhausted  Time 
and  encroached  on  Eternity. 

But  towards  the  end  of  the  sixth  book  of  the 
Faerie  Queene  we  become  conscious  of  a  great  and 
significant  change  of  tone.  It  occurs  subtly  and 
silently,  like  dawn  overspreading  the  sky.  But  it 
means  that  the  spirit  of  the  poet,  and  of  his  art, 
has  changed.  The  Renaissance  is  tiring  of  itself; 
poetry  is  returning  to  life  :  and  with  the  same 
movement  life  is  returning  to  poetry. 

The  note  of  change  comes  with  the  reversion  to 
pastoral  at  the  opening  of  the  ninth  canto. 

Now  turn  again  my  team,  thou  jolly  swain, 
Back  to  the  furrow  which  I  lately  left. 

The  note  here  is  very  different  from  that  of  the 
elaborate  high-flown  introductions  to  which  we  have 
been  accustomed  hitherto.  The  immediate  reference 
is  merely  to  his  customary  process  of  taking  up  the 


THE   NEW   WORLD  129 

dropped  thread  of  his  romance.  But  it  suggests 
more  :  it  suggests  a  return  to  the  furrow  in  another 
sense,  a  return  to  the  pleasant  villages  and  farms, 
to  the  opener  air,  from  the  enchanted  atmosphere, 
heavy  and  luminous,  of  courtly  romance. 

A  soft  air  fans  the  cloud  apart ;  there  comes 
A  glimpse  of  that  dark  world  where  I  was  born. 

The  Faerie  Queene  becomes  a  Winter's  Tale  in  the 
beautiful  episode  which  follows.  The 

shepherd  grooms 

Playing  on  pipes  and  carolling  apace, 
The  whiles  their  beasts  there  in  the  budded  brooms 
Beside  them  fed,  and  nipt  the  tender  blooms, 

are  those  of  the  Shepherds  Calendar  back  again,  but 
softened,  etherealised,  lit  by  romance.  Pastorella, 
the  one  figure  in  the  whole  of  the  Faerie  Queene 
who  is  all  but  human,  reminds  one  of  Shakespeare's 
Perdita.  Like  Perdita  she  needs  must  turn  in  the 
story  into  a  king's  daughter  lost  and  hidden  among 
shepherds  ;  such  was  the  tradition  of  romance,  that 
might  not  lightly  be  broken.  But,  king's  daughter 
or  not,  she  brings  with  her  the  breath  and  beauty  of 
common  life.  The  vanity  of  ambition  is  a  theme 
on  which  throughout  the  poem  Spenser  has  been 
perpetually  discoursing ;  but  here,  for  the  first  time, 
it  brings  with  it  the  vanity  of  courtliness,  the 
evanescence  of  the  Renaissance  ideal.  Meliboeus  the 
shepherd,  Pastorella's  reputed  father,  has  been  a 

I 


130  SPENSER 

courtier  himself  in  his  youth,  has  sold  himself  for 
hire  and  spent  his  youth  in  vain  ;  now,  in  one  of 
Spenser's  most  exquisite  stanzas,  he  tells  how  he 
has  gone  back  to  sweet  peace,  and  "  this  lovely 
quiet  life  which  I  inherit  here."  His  sermon  on 
content  and  simplicity  is  Spenser  speaking  in  his 
own  voice,  sincerely,  without  either  self-conscious- 
ness or  strain.  Pastorella-Perdita  "  had  ever  learned 
to  love  the  lowly  things."  With  the  reversion 
towards  simplicity  is  mingled  a  strain  of  grave  re- 
ligion. It  is  not  only  that  "  happy  peace  "  and  "  the 
perfect  pleasures  "  grow  in  common  life,  and  all  the 
rest  is  but  a  "painted  shadow  of  false  bliss":  it  is 
that  the  whole  gorgeous  fabric  of  romantic  chivalry 
is  a  lure,  "  set  to  entrap  unwary  fools  in  their 
eternal  bales."  And  so,  when  the  shepherds  are 
"  met  to  make  their  sports  and  merry  glee,  as  they 
are  wont  in  fair  sunshiny  weather,"  we  are  reminded 
not  only  of  the  Winter's  Tale  but  of  the  Pilgrim's 
Progress.  "If  a  man  was  to  come  here  in  the 
summer  time,  and  if  he  also  delighted  himself  in  the 
sight  of  his  eyes,  he  might  see  that  that  would  be 
delightful  to  him.  Some  have  wished  that  the  next 
way  to  their  Father's  house  were  here,  that  they 
might  be  troubled  no  more  with  either  hills  or  moun- 
tains to  go  over  ;  but  the  way  is  the  way,  and  there's 
an  end." 

This  new  land   is  as  yet  but  dimly  seen  :  it  is 
coloured  and  half  concealed  by  the  iridescent  vapour. 


THE   NEW   WORLD  131 

While  still  among  the  shepherds,  Calidore  strays 
back  into  fairyland,  to  the  Acidalian  hill  where  he 
sees  the  Graces  dancing,  not  to  the  lyre  of  Apollo, 
but  to  the  pipe  of  Colin  Clout.  But  when  he  moves 
towards  them,  they  all  vanish  out  of  his  sight,  "  and 
are  clean  gone,  which  way  he  never  knew,"  and 
Colin  Clout  is  left  piping  on  the  hillside  alone. 
The  candles  of  the  mediaeval  world  are  burned  out ; 
but  the  eyes  of  those  who  issue  from  the  brilliantly  lit 
palace  are  still  dazzled  and  cannot  see  things  clearly. 
In  the  uncertain  light,  that  pleasant  simple  countryside 
seems  one  in  which  tigers  attack  strawberry-gatherers, 
and  are  decapitated  with  sheephooks.  "  Exit  pur- 
sued by  a  bear,"  is  the  famous  stage-direction  at  the 
end  of  the  first  part  of  the  Winter's  Tale :  sixteen 
years  pass,  and  then  "  enter  Autolycus,  singing." 

So  Spenser  pulls  himself  back,  at  the  opening 
doorway  into  daylight  and  the  new  world.  Calidore's 
life  among  the  shepherds  was  making  him  unmind- 
ful of  his  vow  and  of  the  queen's  commands.  He 
leaves  Pastorella-Perdita  and  goes  on  the  quest  of 
the  Blatant  Beast.  We  are  back  in  the  full  current 
of  allegorical  romance.  But  the  spell,  once  snapped, 
cannot  be  quite  rewoven  ;  the  poem  flutters  for  a 
little  on  a  broken  wing,  and  stops. 

It  stops,  or  the  poet's  death  stopped  it.  The 
story  of  the  last  three  months  of  his  life  is  one  of 
confused  horror.  Fire  and  sword  of  an  Irish  rising ; 
his  home  sacked  and  burned,  and  his  newborn  child 


132  SPENSER 

perishing  in  the  flames ;  a  wretched  winter-flight 
to  England  ;  a  stony  welcome  there,  a  month  or 
two  of  misery  and  illness,  and  death  "  for  lack  of 
bread"  they  said,  if  it  be  not  incredible  :  such  was 
the  tragic  end.  Twelve  years  later  was  published 
the  magnificent  fragment,  "  two  Cantos  of  Muta- 
bility, which,  both  for  form  and  matter,  appear  to 
be  the  parcel  of  some  following  book  of  the  Faerie 
Queene,  under  the  legend  of  Constancy."  They 
may  be  conjectured  to  have  been  written  in  the 
last  year  of  his  life,  and  perhaps  with  some  pre- 
monition of  its  approaching  end.  They  renew  the 
earlier  splendours  of  the  poem,  but  with  a  deeper 
and  graver  music.  In  single  lines  and  phrases  there 
is  an  organ-tone  that  can  scarcely  be  matched  else- 
where in  Spenser  ;  and  the  Titaness,  proud  and  fair, 

Being  of  stature  tall  as  any  there 
Of  all  the  Gods,  and  beautiful  of  face 
As  any  of  the  Goddesses  in  place, 

stands  out  among  the  swaying  tapestry-figures  of 
Spenser's  pageantries  like  some  colossal  sculpture  of 
Michelangelo's.  He  lapses  into  his  old  decorative 
manner  in  the  episode  of  Arlo-hill ;  in  the  simile  of 
the  cat  in  the  dairy  (the  forty-seventh  stanza  of  the 
first  of  the  two  cantos)  it  almost  looks  as  if  he  were 
parodying  himself.  But  from  that  he  rises  again  to 
the  great  speech  of  Mutability  ;  to  the  summoning 
and  appearing  before  the  throne  of  Nature  of  the 


THE   NEW   WORLD  133 

procession  of  the  Seasons  and  the  Months,  Day  and 
Night,  the  Hours,  Life  and  Death  ;  and  to  the  final 
doom  pronounced  by  Nature,  which  sums  up,  in  a 
few  majestic  words,  the  whole  system  and  govern- 
ment of  the  Universe.  Then  Nature  herself  vanishes : 
the  lights  go  out ;  silence  falls ;  and  through  the 
silence  comes  one  last  echo  and  cadence  of  sound,  a 
prayer  to  be  granted  the  Eternal  Peace. 

Thus  Spenser,  in  the  old  Northern  phrase, 
"  changed  his  life,"  and  was  laid  beside  Chaucer 
in  the  Abbey  Church  at  Westminster.  His  life, 
his  vision  of  poetry  as  a  pageant  of  life,  his  con- 
ception of  poetry  as  a  function  of  life,  were  splendid 
and  transitory.  They  ceased  ;  while  life,  and  with 
it  poetry,  moved  on. 


MILTON 


THE  death  of  Spenser,  in  the  penultimate  year  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  really  marks  the  end  of  the 
Elizabethan  age,  the  age  of  the  Tudor  monarchy 
and  the  full  impact  on  English  poetry  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance.  That  Renaissance  had  itself  originated 
in  the  rediscovery  of  ancient  Greece  and  Rome ;  its 
communication  to  England  was  partly  direct,  partly 
and  more  largely  through  the  intervening  medium 
of  France.  The  progress  of  English  poetry  had 
now  passed  through  two  of  the  capital  stages  in 
its  course.  To  the  age  of  Chaucer,  the  final 
flowering  of  mediaeval  England  under  the  foreign 
impulse  of  the  first  Renaissance,  had  succeeded  the 
age  of  Spenser  and  of  the  second  Renaissance.  Eng- 
lish poetry  had  enlarged  its  scope  and  modernised 
its  methods  :  but  it  was  still  national  and  insular ;  it 
still  awaited  a  further  transformation  through  full 
contact  with  the  classics,  full  interfusion  with  the 
central  current  of  European  poetry. 

Much  had  to  be  done  before  this  happened ;  and 
the  poetical  movement  in  England  after  Spenser  is 
intricate  and  confused.  To  the  age  of  Spenser 
immediately  succeeds  the  age  of  Shakespeare.  The 


138  MILTON 

volume  and  energy  of  that  single  genius  gave  a 
new  meaning,  one  might  almost  say,  to  poetry ;  and 
if  Milton  was,  by  direct  and  immediate  inheritance, 
the  successor  of  Spenser,  if,  as  was  the  case,  he 
was  himself  but  little  affected  by  Shakespeare's 
influence,  it  is  nevertheless  true  that  all  English 
poetry  after  Shakespeare  moves  in  a  deepened  and 
enlarged  world. 

The  greater  part  of  the  seventeenth  century  is  occu- 
pied by  the  epoch  of  the  transition.  Between  Shake- 
speare's death  and  the  completion  of  the  Paradise 
Lost  there  are  just  fifty  years.  It  was  a  half-century 
of  profuse  and  multiform  poetical  production.  It 
was  the  period  of  the  great  Jacobean  dramatists, 
Fletcher  and  Massinger,  Ford  and  Webster ;  of 
Donne  and  Vaughan  and  Herbert  and  Crashaw ;  of 
the  Caroline  lyrists,  Wither,  Herrick,  Lovelace ; 
of  Fanshawe,  the  last  of  the  Elizabethans,  and 
Waller,  the  first  of  the  moderns.  Its  most  popular 
and  most  widely  read  poet  was  Cowley :  its  later 
years  saw  the  growing  fame  and  influence  of  Dryden. 
Before  its  conclusion,  Addison  was  born.  In  such 
a  list  of  names  there  is  no  easily  traceable  thread 
of  connexion,  no  regular  line  of  development  and 
advance.  The  confusion  of  English  politics  in  the 
seventeenth  century  seems  reflected  in  the  confusion 
of  English  poetry.  We  cannot  bring  its  progress 
under  any  single  formula.  It  is  difficult  to  dis- 
criminate between  the  poetry  which  represents  the 


PERIOD   OF  THE   TRANSITION     139 

continuance  of  an  earlier  impulse  and  that  which  is 
a  new  beginning,  a  separate  movement.  We  seem 
to  wander  in  a  dimly  lighted  undergrowth,  in  a  close 
dungeon  of  innumerous  boughs.  When  we  emerge 
into  daylight,  it  is  to  find  ourselves  in  another  world. 
Darkness  had  slowly  fallen  on  the  Elizabethan  after- 
glow ;  from  out  of  a  sky  spangled  with  a  confused 
multitude  of  stars  which  succeeded  it,  there  comes 
breaking  and  flooding  in,  slowly  and  inevitably,  the 
Aufklarung,  the  blanched  clearness  of  a  new  and 
modern  day. 

From  the  movement  of  the  age  in  which  he  is  the 
central  and  supreme  figure  in  English  poetry,  Milton 
stands  from  first  to  last  apart,  in  a  magnificent  isola- 
tion. Before  we  attempt  to  consider  his  poetry  and 
appreciate  his  achievement,  it  will  not  be  irrelevant 
to  consider,  and  to  indicate  in  a  brief  summary 
or  suggestion,  what  it  was  that  his  contemporaries 
meant  to  do,  or  did  by  instinct  without  meaning 
it ;  for  only  thus  shall  we  be  in  a  position  to  estimate 
his  relation  to  them,  and  to  judge  how  his  work  in 
poetry  was  akin  to  or  alien  from  theirs. 

The  movement  of  the  seventeenth  century  in 
English  poetry  was  both  an  expansion  and  a  con- 
traction. It  is  on  the  latter  side  that  it  chiefly 
strikes  the  modern  imagination  and  the  modern 
critical  sense.  By  comparison  with  the  opulence 
of  Elizabethan  poetry,  the  poetry  of  Dryden  and 
the  Augustans  seems  narrow  and  thin.  But  it  had 


i4o  MILTON 

acquired  a  quality  which  the  other  had  not,  and 
for  the  sake  of  which  prodigious  sacrifices  had  been 
made ;  it  had  ceased  to  be  insular  and  become  Euro- 
pean. It  had  gone  to  school  and  civilised  itself.  It 
had  submitted  itself  to  laws  of  taste  and  a  standard 
of  manners.  To  the  new  generation,  the  poetry  of 
the  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  age,  with  its  exuber- 
ance, its  superabundance,  its  unrestraint,  had  become 
an  unweeded  garden.  Men  were  tired  of  it ;  their 
minds  were  set  in  a  different  direction.  Elizabethan 
poetry  had  abolished  the  mediaeval  tradition,  and 
reared  upon  its  ruins  a  fabric  of  wonderful  beauty 
and  magnificence ;  now  its  own  turn  had  come  to 
be  replaced,  to  succumb  to  new  ideas,  to  give  way 
before  a  new  manner.  Its  beauties  had  for  the  time 
being  ceased  to  attract ;  its  defects,  the  defects  of 
slovenliness  and  quaintness,  were  what  criticism 
fastened  upon,  and  what  not  only  criticism  but 
living  poetical  instinct  set  itself  to  overcome.  To 
get  rid  of  these  the  spirit  of  the  new  age  was  ready 
to  sacrifice  anything.  That  new  movement  was  the 
legacy  of  the  dead  Renaissance.  It  had  the  defects 
of  its  virtues.  A  classical  ideal  had  been  established : 
but  in  the  effort  to  attain  it,  poetry  side-slipped  into 
classicism. 

In  the  labyrinth  of  seventeenth-century  poetry,  the 
criticism  of  the  eighteenth  fastened,  instinctively  and 
rightly,  on  Waller,  as  the  clue  guiding  past  divergent 
paths  and  blind  alleys  to  the  actual  passage  out  of 


PERIOD   OF   THE  TRANSITION     141 

which  poetry  finally  emerged.  Waller  was,  but  for 
this,  a  poet  of  but  small  account  either  for  the 
quantity  or  the  quality  of  his  writing.  It  would  be 
difficult,  but  for  this,  to  understand  how  he  got  his 
great  and  long-lasting  reputation.  He  was  smooth, 
Pope  tells  us,  and  we  are  apt  to  ask  what  there  is  so 
very  remarkable  in  being  smooth.  But  this  smooth- 
ness, this  clean  polish,  was  just  then  the  quality 
towards  the  attainment  of  which  the  effort  of  litera- 
ture in  England  was  converging  and  concentrating. 
In  the  critical  essay  at  the  end  of  the  Life,  Johnson 
weighs  Waller  piece  by  piece  and  finds  him  light 
currency.  "  But  it  cannot  be  denied,"  he  ends, 
"  that  he  added  something  to  our  elegance  of  dic- 
tion, and  something  to  our  propriety  of  thought." 
The  conclusion  is  fine  and  just.  Elegance  and  pro- 
priety are  secondary,  not  essential,  qualities  in  poetry. 
But  they  are  included,  together  with  other  qualities 
far  nobler  and  larger,  in  the  content  of  poetry  which 
is  classic,  as  they  are  qualities  which  assume  an 
exaggerated  importance  in  the  poetry  which  founds 
itself  upon  the  classics,  but  is  itself  only  classicist. 
To  the  inaugurators  of  a  new  reaction  a  century 
later  it  seemed  that  nearly  all  had  been  lost  which 
was  worth  saving.  But  in  looking  at  what  was  lost 
they  disregarded,  or  too  lightly  took  for  granted, 
what  had  been  won ;  for  all  such  losses  are  but 
transformations  of  energy.  What  had  been  won 
was  this ;  that  English  literature  had  been  brought 


142  MILTON 

into  the  main  stream  of  European  art  and  thought, 
had  equipped  itself  with  modern  arms  to  meet  the 
conditions  of  the  actual  world,  and  was  prepared  to 
take  its  place  in  the  great  intellectual  movement 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  Poetry  had  shifted  its 
axis.  The  movement  was  hardly  one  either  of 
advance  or  of  regression  ;  it  was  rather  what  is 
called  in  the  mechanical  sciences  a  movement  of 
translation. 

Such  was  the  large  and  strenuous  task  partly  set 
before  itself  of  set  purpose,  partly  followed  by  a 
half-unconscious  instinct,  by  the  poetry  of  the  latter 
half  of  the  seventeenth  century.  It  is  worth  noting 
that  in  what  I  have  called  a  movement  of  transla- 
tion, translation  in  the  other  sense  of  that  word  took 
a  very  important  part.  It  was  the  age  of  transla- 
tions, in  a  somewhat  different  sense  and  with  a 
somewhat  different  purpose  from  the  ages  which 
preceded  and  followed  it,  though  both  of  these 
were  equally  abundant  in  the  number  of  trans- 
lations they  produced.  At  an  earlier  period, 
the  classic  poets,  whether  those  of  ancient  Greece 
or  Rome  or  those  of  a  more  modern  foreign 
civilisation  in  Italy  or  France,  had  been  trans- 
lated primarily  for  the  sake  of  their  contents, 
in  order  to  give  access  to  an  otherwise  unknown 
world  that  held  in  it  the  secrets  of  knowledge. 
At  a  later  period  they  came  to  be  translated  for 
the  sake  of  translating,  in  the  exercise  of  the 


PERIOD   OF   THE   TRANSITION     143 

secondary  but  not  despicable  art  of  the  copyist. 
In  the  seventeenth  century,  from  Fairfax's  Tasso 
just  at  its  beginning  to  Dryden's  Virgil  just  at  its 
end,  we  can  see  the  one  object  fading  out  and  the 
other  growing ;  and  between  them,  connecting  the 
one  with  the  other,  a  third  object  predominant. 
That  object  was  to  make  the  English  language 
into  a  completed  vehicle  of  poetical  expression ;  to 
make  England  into  an  organic  member  of  the  Re- 
public of  Letters,  and  to  fuse  the  life  and  progress 
of  English  poetry  with  those  of  the  poetry  of  the 
civilised  world.  A  similar  object,  or  at  least  a 
similar  instinct,  was  at  the  basis  of  another  notice- 
able feature  in  the  latter  half  of  the  century. 
This  was  the  fashion  of  laborious,  and  as  it 
seems  now  little  more  than  pedantic,  translations 
of  English  poetical  masterpieces  into  Latin :  that 
of  Chaucer's  Troilus  and  Cressida  by  Kynaston, 
that  of  Fletcher's  Faithful  Shepherdess  by  Fan- 
shawe,  that  made  of  the  Paradise  Lost  itself,  but 
a  few  years  after  its  publication,  by  Henry  Bold. 
This  was  not  only  pedantry ;  still  less  was  it  only 
undertaken  on  such  grounds  as  those  on  which 
the  practice  of  Latin  verse-making  is  continued 
and  defended  to-day.  It  was  another  movement  of 
the  same  general  impulse ;  it  meant  the  testing  of 
these  English  poems  by  a  certain  classical  standard, 
and  the  vindication  for  them  of  a  certain  classical  or 
universal  quality.  It  was  a  recognition,  in  a  queer 


144  MILTON 

distorted  fashion  doubtless,  of  the  unity  and  soli- 
darity of  poetry.  The  European  nations  still  held 
by  a  Latin  standard.  We  find  Milton  in  his  youth 
still  weighing,  as  Dante  had  done  more  than  three 
centuries,  as  Ariosto  had  done  more  than  a  century 
earlier,  the  question  of  writing  his  great  poem  in 
Latin.  After  Milton  the  question  had  no  longer  to 
be  considered.  Gray's  fragment  De  Princi-piis  Cogi- 
tandi,  Lander's  first  Latin  draft  of  Gebir,  are  isolated 
anachronisms.  The  beginnings  of  the  modern  world 
coincide  with  the  disuse  of  Latin  as  a  universal 
language.  In  politics  and  diplomacy  it  slowly  gave 
way  to  French.  In  science,  Newton's  Principia, 
published  thirteen  years  after  Milton's  death,  was 
the  last  work  of  first-rate  importance  written  in 
Latin  to  appear  in  England.  Locke,  about  the  same 
time,  elected  for  English  in  the  work  which  laid  the 
foundations  of  analytic  philosophy.  The  English 
language  had  entered  into  its  full  inheritance. 

But  from  the  general  poetic  movement  of  the 
age,  Milton  from  first  to  last  stands  apart.  In  the 
period  between  his  earlier  and  his  later  poems,  Eng- 
lish poetry  had  not  only  altered  its  accent ;  it  had 
changed  its  language.  At  neither  point  (if  we  ex- 
clude a  few  slight  juvenile  pieces  of  his  boyhood  and 
those  metrical  versions  of  the  Psalms  in  which  he 
elected  not  to  be  a  poet)  are  his  accent  and  speech 
those  of  his  age.  He  moved  in  a  world  of  his  own  : 
on  a  different  plane,  in  a  different  atmosphere.  In 


MILTON  AND   HIS  AGE  145 

the  Comus  there  are  passages  in  the  later  Elizabethan 
or  Jacobean  manner.  In  the  Samson  there  are  pas- 
sages approximating  to  the  manner  of  the  Restora- 
tion. In  both  cases,  such  passages  stand  out  from 
the  rest  of  his  work  with  an  air  of  strangeness.  He 
remains  himself  even  in  these  ;  there  is  not  a  square 
inch  of  his  poetry  from  first  to  last  of  which  one 
could  not  confidently  say,  This  is  Milton  and  no  one 
else.  But  he  is  least  Milton  where  he  writes,  rarely 
and  for  a  few  lines  together,  in  a  manner  approximat- 
ing to  the  characteristic  manner  of  the  age  in  which 
he  wrote. 

These  lines,  for  instance,  from  the  Comus  come 
very  near  the  Elizabethan  manner ;  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  one's  admiration  for  them  would 
be  mingled  with  any  shade  of  surprise  if  one  came 
on  them  in  reading  a  play  of  Massinger's  : 

Why  should  you  be  so  cruel  to  yourself 

And  to  those  dainty  limbs,  which  Nature  lent 

For  gentle  usage  and  soft  delicacy  ? 

But  you  invert  the  covenants  of  her  trust 

And  harshly  deal,  like  an  ill  borrower, 

With  that  which  you  receiv'd  on  other  terms. 

They  are  the  Elizabethan  style  at  its  finest  and 
purest ;  but  it  is  only  perhaps  in  the  reflected  light 
of  the  lines  which  precede  and  follow  them,  and 
which  are  unmistakeable  Milton,  that  these  six  lines 
are  anything  beyond  Elizabethanism  grown  trans- 
lucent. Certainly  one  would  not  single  them  out 
as  characteristically  Miltonic. 


146  MILTON 

Similarly  in  his  latest  work  may  be  found,  but 
very  rarely,  two  or  three  lines  together  that,  if  de- 
tached from  their  context,  come  very  close  to  the 
post-Restoration  manner  in  poetry,  the  manner 
handed  down  to  the  eighteenth  century  by  Dryden 
and  Otway. 

Spare  that  proposal,  father,  spare  the  trouble 
Of  that  solicitation  ;  let  me  here, 
As  I  deserve,  pay  on  my  punishment 
And  expiate,  if  possible,  my  crime. 

By  stopping  here  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence,  we 
get  four  lines  which  in  rhythm  and  diction  might 
belong  to  some  contemporary  play,  such  as  the 
Maiden  Queen  or  Venice  Preserved.  But  even  to 
get  anything  as  like  as  this  we  have  to  juggle  a 
little  with  the  text. 

Between  the  poetical  manner  of  the  Comus  and 
the  poetical  manner  of  the  Samson  Agonistes  there 
is  a  vast  interval ;  but  the  interval  is  intra-Miltonic  ; 
the  orbit  lies  from  first  to  last  in  a  plane  of  its 
own ;  and  from  the  general  poetical  movement  of 
his  age  Milton,  as  I  said,  stands  wholly  apart.  He 
founded  no  school ;  he  exercised  no  effect  upon 
contemporary  poets.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  if 
he  had  never  been  born  the  development  of  English 
poetry  up  to  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century 
would  have  been  sensibly  different  from  what  it  was. 
Yet  he  is  of  the  centre,  as  none  of  his  contemporaries 
are.  He  did  for  English  poetry  a  work  higher 


THE   SEARCH   FOR   PERFECTION     147 

than  theirs,  overmastering  and  including  theirs,  a 
work  that  has  to  be  done  once  and  once  only,  and 
beyond  which  there  is  nothing  more  to  do.  They 
made  our  poetry  civilised  :  he  made  it  classic.  With 
one  magnificent  movement  of  ascension  and  concen- 
tration he  lifted  it  onto  the  heights  that  signal  to 
one  another  across  the  world.  He  struck  for  one 
object,  hitherto  unsought  and  undreamed  of  by 
English  poetry  ;  he  sacrificed  everything  for  it,  and 
achieved  it.  That  object  was  perfection. 

Where  perfection  is  the  object  seen  and  aimed  at, 
it  will  allow  of  no  rival,  and  exacts  prodigious  pay- 
ment. All  other  objects  must  be  discarded,  or  go 
for  fuel  into  the  furnace.  Thus  it  is  only  momen- 
tarily attainable  ;  it  feeds  its  life's  flame  with  self- 
substantial  fuel,  which  at  the  best  just  lasts  out 
until  the  moment  of  projection.  It  cannot  be  con- 
tinued or  transmitted.  It  can  be  attained  perhaps 
only  once  in  the  progress  of  any  single  art  within 
the  bounds  of  any  single  civilisation  ;  behind  follows 
exhaustion  and  relapse,  in  so  far  as  the  art  does  not 
break  away  and  begin  afresh  upon  other  lines  and 
with  other  motives.  It  is  as  though  Nature  herself 
had  in  this  particular  direction  done  her  utmost, 
and  fell  away  from  her  achievement  exhausted. 

From  his  boyhood  onwards,  Milton  felt  in  himself 
this  absorbing  and  controlling  impulse.  He  took 
no  pains  to  conceal  it ;  rather  he  emphasised  it  from 
the  first  with  deliberate  gravity.  He  was  to  do  in 


148  MILTON 

English  poetry  what  no  one  hitherto  had  done,  what 
no  one  hitherto  had  even  tried  to  do  ;  for  its  attain- 
ment, no  training  was  too  severe,  no  education  too 
prolonged,  no  delay  worth  considering  twice.  What- 
ever happened,  he  was  not  going  to  be  hurried. 
He  deliberately  took  the  risk  of  total  failure  rather 
than  be  content  to  fall  back  on  any  imperfect  suc- 
cess. He  laid  out  his  task  as  though  he  had 
eternity  before  him.  Like  the  merchantman  of  the 
parable,  he  sold  all  he  had  to  buy  that  one  pearl. 
Even  in  the  sphere  of  poetry  itself,  he  gravely  put 
away  from  him  the  other  things  which  are  its  life 
and  which  make  it  precious  ;  he  put  away  tears  and 
laughter,  the  common  sweetness  of  earth,  the  power 
to  move  the  hearts  and  bring  loveliness  into  the 
lives  of  men. 

In  the  Vacation  Exercise,  written  in  his  nineteenth 
year  at  Cambridge,  this  note  is  struck  with  complete 
certainty.  Still  little  more  in  mind  than  a  boy,  as 
the  other  extant  pieces  belonging  to  that  period  of 
his  life  show,  he  had  already  cut  himself  adrift  from 
his  age  ;  already  he  saw  clear  and  high  before  him 
the  path  that  led  up  to  the  summit  where  the  Muses 
sit  crowned.  The  celebrated  Nuneham  portrait, 
though  it  was  not  painted  till  a  year  or  two  later, 
shows  him  as  he  was  then.  With  the  severe  beauti- 
ful face  of  which  we  possess  this  record,  Milton  at 
the  age  of  nineteen  had  scanned  the  whole  poetical 
movement  going  on  among  his  contemporaries  and 


THE  SEARCH   FOR   PERFECTION     149 

dismissed  it  as  slight,  fantastic,  not  worthy  of  him 
and  of  what  he  conceived  as  the  actual  dignity  and 
potential  capabilities  of  his  art.  The  earlier  part  of 
the  Exercise  had  been  in  Latin.  Then  he  turns 
and  invokes  his  native  language. 

Here  I  salute  thee,  and  thy  pardon  ask 

That  now  I  use  thee  in  my  latter  task. 

I  pray  thee  then,  deny  me  not  thine  aid 

For  this  same  small  neglect  that  I  have  made, 

But  haste  thee  straight  and  do  me  once  a  pleasure 

And  from  thy  wardrobe  bring  thy  chiefest  treasure  ; 

Not  those  newfangled  toys,  and  trimming  slight 

Which  takes  our  late  fantastics  with  delight; 

But  cull  those  richest  robes  and  gay'st  attire 

Which  deepest  spirits  and  choicest  wits  desire. 

Yet  I  had  rather,  if  I  were  to  chuse, 

Thy  service  in  some  graver  subject  use 

Such  as  may  make  thee  search  thy  coffers  round 

Before  thou  clothe  my  fancy  in  fit  sound  : 

Such,  where  the  deep  transported  mind  may  soar 

Above  the  wheeling  poles,  and  at  heaven's  door 

Look  in,  and  see  each  blissful  deity 

How  he  before  the  thunderous  throne  doth  lie, 

Listening  to  what  unshorn  Apollo  sings 

To  the  touch  of  golden  wires,  while  Hebe  brings 

Immortal  nectar  to  her  kingly  sire. 

"  If  I  were  to  choose,"  he  says  :  but  he  had  already 
chosen.  He  realised  fully  what  the  choice  meant. 
At  the  point  where  others  ended  their  education,  he 
began  his.  He  studied  silently  and  intensely  for  the 
next  ten  years,  writing  little  and  publishing  less  until 
an  age  at  which  many  poets  have  done  their  finest 
work.  At  the  age  of  twenty-three,  just  before 


150  MILTON 

leaving  Cambridge,  he  gravely  records  that,  in  aa 
age  of  precocious  maturities,  his  own  late  spring 
showed  no  bud  or  blossom.  The  full  meaning  of 
this  can  only  be  realised  when  we  remember  that  he 
had  already  written  the  Nativity  Ode,  and  either 
had  written  or  was  just  about  to  write  the  Allegro 
and  Penseroso.  These  pieces,  in  which  he  refused  to 
recognise  even  the  blossom  of  what  he  meant  to  do 
in  poetry,  sound  a  note  hitherto  unknown  in  this 
island.  Between  two  and  three  years  later  he  was 
induced  by  Henry  Lawes  to  write  the  Ludlow 
Masque.  It  was  still  with  the  same  strange  deli- 
berate sense  of  immaturity.  He  would  not  publicly 
acknowledge  its  authorship ;  for  long  he  would  not 
allow  it  to  be  printed.  When  Lawes  at  last  suc- 
ceeded in  his  insistence  that  there  was  a  limit  to  the 
number  of  manuscript  copies  which  he  could  make 
to  satisfy  the  enthusiasm  of  those  who  had  seen  it 
or  heard  of  it,  and  that  it  must  be  produced  to 
public  view,  Milton  would  not  let  his  name  appear 
on  it.  Instead  of  an  author's  name  on  the  title- 
page  there  was  a  motto  which  is  a  sharp  cry  of 
annoyance  and  pain. 

Eheu,  quid  volui  misero  mihi  !  floribus  austrum 
Perditus — 

The  blossom  of  that  hesitating  spring  must  be 
guarded  jealously  till  it  matured  into  fruitage :  ut 
flos  in  septis  secretum  nascitur  hortis,  ignotus  pecori, 


THE   SEARCH   FOR  PERFECTION     151 

nullo  contusus  aratro.  A  few  months  later  he  allowed 
another  flower  to  stray  out  of  that  secret  garden. 
Lycidas,  with  his  initials  only  to  give  any  public  clue 
to  its  authorship,  appeared  at  the  end  of  a  little 
collection  entitled  Obsequies  to  the  Memorie  of  Mr. 
Edward  King,  printed  at  the  Cambridge  University 
Press,  and  not,  we  may  reasonably  suppose,  circulated 
or  read  outside  of  Cambridge  to  any  appreciable 
extent. 

In  effect,  then,  it  may  be  said  that  Milton  pub- 
lished no  poetry  until  the  volume  of  1645.  He 
was  then  thirty-seven ;  he  had  recently  turned  to 
another  field  of  labour,  and  as  he  regarded  it,  of 
duty ;  he  had  come  down  from  the  hill  of  the 
Muses  to  become  a  publicist  and  controversial 
writer ;  he  was  known,  not  as  a  poet,  but  as  the 
author  of  pamphlets  on  episcopacy,  divorce,  and 
liberty  of  unlicensed  printing.  He  saw  another 
long  delay  before  him,  another  laborious  stage  in 
the  long  process  of  self-education  and  self-develop- 
ment, which  could  take  no  short  cuts,  and  would  be 
ruined  by  any  neglect  of  duty,  however  laborious  or 
distasteful  duty  might  be.  His  determination  to 
publish  then  was  no  doubt  made  on  mixed  motives. 
In  the  curious  preface  prefixed  by  the  publisher  we 
can  certainly  hear  an  echo  of  Milton's  own  voice  and 
judgment. 

"  It's  the  worth  of  these  Poems,"  he  writes,  "  not 
the  flourish  of  any  prefixed  encomions  that  can  invite 


152  MILTON 

thee  to  buy  them,  though  these  are  not  without 
the  highest  Commendations  and  Applause  of  the 
learned'st  Academicks.  ...  I  know  not  .  .  .  how 
harmonious  thy  soul  is ;  perhaps  more  trivial  Airs 
may  please  thee  better.  But  ...  let  the  event  guide 
it  self  which  way  it  will,  I  shall  deserve  of  the  age, 
by  bringing  into  the  Light  as  true  a  Birth,  as  the 
Muses  have  brought  forth  since  our  famous  Spencer 
wrote ;  whose  Poems  in  these  .  .  .  are  as  rarely 
imitated,  as  sweetly  excell'd.  Reader,  if  thou  art 
Eagle-eied  to  censure  their  worth,  I  am  not  fearful 
to  expose  them  to  thy  exactest  perusal." 

In  this  last  sentence  especially  it  is  Milton's  very 
self  who  speaks.  Self-depreciation  was  never  a 
weakness  of  his ;  he  will  have  no  indulgence ;  he 
will  not  be  tried  by  any  standard  but  the  highest. 
How  far  he  still  fell  short  of  that  perfection  on 
which  he  had  set  his  eyes  was  a  matter  between  him- 
self and  his  Maker,  in  which  he  would  not  have 
allowed  that  any  one  else  had  any  concern.  In 
this,  no  less  than  in  his  politics  and  his  theology,  he 
was  Puritanism  incarnate.  In  the  sphere  of  art,  as 
in  the  sphere  of  civic  and  religious  life,  he  represents 
individualism  carried  to  its  highest  point.  To  that 
spirit  the  pride  of  life,  the  glory  of  this  world,  was 
as  nothing  :  it  was  fused  and  vaporised  in  the  higher 
spiritual  pride,  a  pride  so  intense  that  it  took  upon 
itself  the  likeness  of  a  strange  and  sublime  humility. 
In  the  noble  sonnet  of  Wordsworth's,  written  by  a 


THE  SEARCH  FOR   PERFECTION     153 

poet  who  in  this  respect  as  in  others  had  much  in 
common  with  Milton,  there  is  one  flaw.  "  Thy  soul 
was  like  a  star  and  dwelt  apart,"  he  says,  and  says 
truly  :  but  then  he  goes  on  to  say  "  and  yet  thy  heart 
the  lowliest  duties  on  itself  did  lay."  No,  it  was 
not  his  heart ;  it  was  his  soul  still,  the  same  austere 
lonely  soul  that  would  call  no  man  master,  that 
claimed,  or  assumed  without  claiming,  freedom  from 
all  restraint  but  that  of  the  inward  law.  The  essence 
of  Puritanism,  what  was  at  once  its  tremendous 
strength  and  its  fatal  weakness,  was  just  this,  that 
it  was  the  merciless  requirement  of  perfection.  This 
is  the  spirit  which  shows  itself  in  the  famous  passage 
of  Lycidas,  where  the  desire  of  fame  is  spoken  of  as 
being,  however  noble  in  its  kind  and  however  en- 
nobling in  its  effect,  a  last  infirmity  which  has  to  be 
overcome.  It  is  the  spirit  of  the  concluding  phrase 
of  the  Comus,  the  words  which  Milton  himself,  five 
years  after  they  were  written,  set  down  again  as  the 
motto  of  his  life,  If  virtue  feeble  were,  Heaven  itself 
would,  stoop  to  her.  It  is  the  spirit  of  Milton,  and, 
among  the  poets,  of  Milton  only :  for  Puritanism 
only  flowers  once. 

It  is  only  by  close  attention  to  this  attitude  of 
mind  that  we  can  understand  and  appreciate  the 
unique  character  of  the  contents  of  this  volume  of 
1645.  Into  it  he  put,  seemingly  without  selection, 
practically  all  that  he  had  written.  Alongside  of 
masterpieces  unequalled  in  English  there  are  scraps 


154  MILTON 

of  mere  occasional  verse,  there  are  things  begun  and 
then  left  off  because  he  recognised  that  they  were  in 
a  false  manner  and  not  worth  going  on  with,  there 
are  even  school  exercises  composed  when  he  was  a 
boy  at  St.  Paul's.  Nearly  thirty  years  later,  when 
revising  the  volume,  he  added  to  it,  in  the  same 
strange,  dispassionate,  almost  impersonal  way  of  re- 
garding his  own  work,  another  juvenile  set  of  verses, 
the  stanzas  On  the  Death  of  a  Fair  Infant,  which  he 
seems  to  have  forgotten,  or  been  unable  to  lay  his 
hands  upon,  when  he  was  collecting  material  for  the 
earlier  volume.  "  From  a  boy  of  seventeen,"  says 
Warton  of  this  piece  generously  and  quite  justly, 
"  this  Ode  is  an  extraordinary  effort  of  fancy,  ex- 
pression, and  versification  "  ;  but  this  is  the  utmost 
that  can  be  said  of  it.  It  is  imitative,  laboured,  full 
of  boyish  conceits.  He  cannot  have  attached  any 
value  to  it  except  from  the  haughty  feeling,  trace- 
able all  throughout  his  life,  that  it  was  enough  to 
give  any  verses  value  that  they  bore  the  signature 
of  John  Milton.  But  this  was  only  the  other  side 
of  a  feeling  as  deep  and  showing  an  even  more  superb 
pride,  that  up  to  the  age  of  forty,  all  that  he  had 
written  stood  finally  on  the  same  level,  because  none 
of  it  was  good  enough  to  stand  above  that  signature. 
The  fact  then  that  Milton  did  not  suppress,  but 
on  the  contrary  deliberately  perpetuated,  his  earliest, 
slightest,  and  most  immature  essays  in  poetry,  is  not 
to  be  taken  as  indicating  any  failure  in  his  judgment, 


THE   HESPERIAN   GARDENS        155 

any  flaw  in  his  fastidiousness,  any  wavering  in  his 
merciless  and  unwavering  requirement  of  perfection. 
From  the  first,  or  almost  from  the  first,  he  is  as 
rigorous  with  his  own  poetry  as  with  the  conduct  of 
his  own  life.  The  most  striking  single  instance  of 
this  is  to  be  found  in  the  autograph  manuscript  of 
the  Comus.  A  passage  of  sixteen  lines  is  crossed  out 
in  the  prologue,  which  no  one  but  Milton  could  ever 
have  written,  and  no  one  but  Milton  ever  have  struck 
out.  Though  this  passage  is  of  course  familiar  to 
all  students  of  Milton's  poetry,  it  is  and  always  has 
been  unknown  to  many  of  his  most  constant  readers 
and  most  ardent  lovers.  This  fact,  together  with 
another  to  which  I  will  come  presently,  is  sufficient 
excuse  for  quoting  the  whole  of  the  opening  para- 
graph of  the  prologue  as  it  originally  stood. 

Before  the  starry  threshold  of  Jove's  court 
My  mansion  is,  where  those  immortal  shapes 
Of  bright  aerial  spirits  live  inspher'd 
In  regions  mild  of  calm  and  serene  air 
Amidst  the  Hesperian  gardens,  on  whose  banks 
Bedew'd  with  nectar  and  celestial  songs 
Eternal  roses  grow  and  hyacinth 
And  fruits  of  golden  rind,  on  whose  fair  tree 
The  scaly-harness'd  dragon  ever  keeps 
His  unenchanted  eye  ;  around  the  verge 
And  sacred  limits  of  this  blissful  isle 
The  jealous  ocean,  that  old  river,  winds 
His  far  extended  arms,  till  with  steep  fall 
Half  his  waste  flood  the  wild  Atlantic  fills 
And  half  the  slow  unfathom'd  Stygian  pool. 
I  doubt  me,  gentle  mortals,  these  may  seem 


156  MILTON 

Strange  distances  to  hear,  and  unknown  climes. 

But  soft,  I  was  not  sent  to  court  your  wonder 

With  distant  worlds  and  strange  removed  climes. 

Yet  thence  I  come,  and  oft  from  thence  behold 

The  smoke  and  stir  of  this  dim  narrow  spot 

Which  men  call  earth  ;  and  with  low-thoughted  care 

Confin'd  and  pester'd  in  this  pinfold  here 

Strive  to  keep  up  a  frail  and  feverish  being 

Beyond  the  written  date  of  mortal  change, 

Unmindful  of  the  crown  that  Virtue  gives 

After  this  mortal  change  to  her  true  servants 

Amongst  the  enthron'd  Gods  on  sainted  seats. 

Yet  some  there  be  that  by  due  steps  aspire 

To  lay  their  just  hands  on  that  golden  key 

That  opes  the  palace  of  Eternity. 

To  such  my  errand  is,  and  but  for  such 

I  would  not  soil  these  pure  ambrosial  weeds 

With  the  rank  vapours  of  this  sin-worn  mould. 


In  this  magnificent  passage  we  have  the  potential 
Milton  of  the  Paradise  Lost :  we  have  at  their  full 
power  the  consummate  finish  of  diction  and  phras- 
ing, the  smooth  irresistible  movement,  the  planetary 
wheeling  of  the  long  period.  But  in  its  place,  and 
for  its  object,  Milton  felt  it  to  be  overloaded ;  and 
with  a  single  stroke  of  the  pen,  half  of  it,  and  that 
in  itself  the  most  splendid  half,  disappeared.  But 
for  the  chance  preservation  of  the  autograph  manu- 
script, we  should  know  nothing  of  a  passage  which 
perhaps  as  much  as  any  single  one  in  Milton's  whole 
work  combines  the  perfection  of  the  classical  with 
the  perfection  of  the  romantic  manner. 

In  his  fully  mature  poetry  his  manner  becomes,  of 


THE   HESPERIAN   GARDENS        157 

course,  more  exclusively  classic.  Passages  conceived 
and  executed  in  the  distinctively  romantic  manner, 
though  incorporated  with  exquisite  skill,  show  a 
different  texture  and  tone  from  their  surroundings, 
and  are  to  that  extent  at  least  theoretically  detach- 
able. Bentley,  in  his  celebrated  edition  of  the  Para- 
dise Lost,  actually  proposed  to  detach  them,  and 
while  he  did  this  in  a  rash  and  rather  absurd  way, 
he  was  on  the  track  of  a  real  and  even  a  profound 
critical  principle.  But  in  this  suppressed  passage  of 
the  Comus  the  classical  and  romantic  elements  are 
in  perfect  fusion,  and  for  a  moment — no  more  is 
possible — in  exact  counterpoise.  It  is  likewise  an 
education  in  criticism  to  compare  this  passage  with 
the  others  in  which  Milton  handles  the  same  motive. 
Two  of  them  are  in  this  same  poem ;  one  in  the 
Younger  Brother's  speech : 

But  Beauty,  like  the  fair  Hesperian  tree 
Laden  with  blooming  gold,  had  need  the  guard 
Of  dragon  watch  with  unenchanted  eye 
To  save  her  blossoms  and  defend  her  fruit 
From  the  rash  hand  of  bold  Incontinence. 

The  central  line  here  (one  of  those  miraculously 
melodious  lines  of  which  Milton  and  Keats  alone 
had  the  secret)  gives  the  concentrated  essence  of 
the  suppressed  passage ;  it  is  once  more  an  instance 
of  the  perfect  fusion  of  the  classical  and  romantic 
tones :  the  rest  is  hardening  into  classicism.  The 


158  MILTON 

other  is  the  lyrical  epilogue  to  the  Masque ;  the 
single  magical  phrase  of 

Hesperus  and  his  daughters  three 
That  sing  about  the  golden  tree. 

That  is  neither  classical  nor  romantic  ;  for  both  those 
terms  involve  a  choice  of  manner,  a  deliberate  style. 
To  use  a  phrase  which  I  borrow  from  another  con- 
text, "  it  is  neither  classical  nor  romantic  ;  it  is 
simply  right." 

Here  once  more  it  is  not  merely  a  lesson  in  criti- 
cism, but  a  glimpse  into  the  process  of  creation,  to 
turn  to  the  Milton  manuscript  and  see  how  Milton 
tried  the  phrase  over  and  over  and  made  three  suc- 
cessive alterations  in  it  before  it  took  its  final  shape 
of  simple  and  seemingly  unconscious  or  inspired 
perfection.  There  are  but  few  instances  in  which 
one  is  let  so  intimately  into  the  inner  laboratory 
of  the  artist.  Mr.  de  Selincourt  in  his  admirable 
edition  of  Keats  (and  Keats,  I  may  say  in  passing,  is 
the  English  poet  who  in  method  and  workmanship 
offers  the  nearest  analogy  to  Milton)  has  shown  how 
through  a  similar  process,  involving  four  successive 
alterations,  the  lines  in  Hyperion., 

Not  so  much  life  as  on  a  summer's  day 

Robs  not  one  light  seed  from  the  feather'd  grass, 

took  their  perfect  phrasing  and  melody.  It  is  not 
so  generally  known  that  a  similar  alteration — one 
only,  but  one  that  makes  all  the  difference — was 


THE   HESPERIAN   GARDENS        159 

made  by  Keats  in  the  first  line  of  Endymion,  but 
made  before  the  line  was  committed  to  paper. 

There  are  three  passages  introducing  the  same 
motive  in  the  Paradise  Lost,  and  one,  in  some  ways 
the  most  interesting  of  all,  in  the  Paradise  Regained. 
Those  in  the  Paradise  Lost  are  in  the  fully  developed 
classical  manner ;  we  can  see  in  them  how  in  the 
hands  of  any  poet  of  inferior  genius  to  Milton's  that 
manner  becomes  classicist ;  even  with  him  it  is  on  the 
point  of  stiffening.  They  occur  in  the  third,  fourth, 
and  eighth  books.  On  Satan's  first  entrance  into  the 
newly  created  system,  he  passes 

Amongst  innumerable  stars,  that  shone 
Stars  distant,  but  nigh  hand  seemed  other  worlds, 
Like  those  Hesperian  gardens  fam'd  of  old, 
Fortunate  fields  and  groves  and  flowery  vales. 

When  he  makes  his  way  into  the  Earthly  Paradise, 
he  sees  in  it 

Groves  whose  rich  trees  wept  odorous  gums  and  balm, 
Others,  whose  fruit  burnisht  with  golden  rind 
Hung  amiable,  Hesperian  fables  true, 
If  true,  here  only. 

And    Raphael   when    leaving    the    garden    says  to 

Adam, 

The  parting  sun 

Beyond  the  earth's  green  cape  and  verdant  isles 
Hesperian  sets,  my  signal  to  depart. 

It  is  curious  to  see  how,  in  these  three  recurrences, 
the  imaginative  or  musical  motive  passes  through 


160  MILTON 

successive  contractions,  shrinking  in  the  last  to  a 
mere  verbal  or  musical  suggestion,  an  intangible 
colour  on  the  language.  It  recurs  once  more,  as 
though  in  an  echo,  in  the  Paradise  Regained.  This 
is  in  the  very  remarkable  passage  describing  the 
visionary  banquet  set  before  Our  Saviour  by  the 
Tempter.  There  Milton,  with  his  last  backward 
look  on  the  realms  of  romance,  sets  the  "  Ladies  of 
the  Hesperides  "  beside  the  later  enchantment 

Of  fairy  damsels  met  in  forest  wide 
By  knights  of  Logres  or  of  Lyones. 

I  said  that  there  was  another  reason  for  laying 
special  stress  on  the  suppressed  passage  in  the 
prologue  of  the  Comus.  It  is  this;  that  it  pre- 
sents a  most  curious  and  fertile  analogy  with  one 
of  Tennyson's  most  splendid  early  poems,  which 
he  also  suppressed  after  it  had  appeared  in  the 
volume  of  1832,  and  which  was  never  allowed 
to  reappear  until  after  his  death.  Even  now  the 
Hesperides  is  perhaps  not  very  widely  known.  But 
to  those  who  do  know  it,  it  will  seem  nearly  cer- 
tain that  besides  the  two  lines  from  the  Comus 
which  Tennyson  prefixed  to  it,  he  had  read  the 
Milton  manuscript  at  Trinity,  and  been  profoundly 
influenced  by  the  suppressed  passage. 

Wandering  waters  unto  wandering  waters  call  ; 
Let  them  clash  together,  foam  and  fall. 
Out  of  watchings,  out  of  wiles 
Comes  the  bliss  of  secret  smiles. 


THE   HESPERIAN   GARDENS        161 

All  things  are  not  told  to  all. 

Half  round  the  mantling  night  is  drawn, 

Purple-fringed  with  even  and  dawn  .  .  . 

Till  mid-noon  the  cool  east  light 

Is  shut  out  by  the  round  of  the  tall  hill-brow  ; 

But  when  the  full-faced  sunset  yellowly 

Stays  on  the  flowering  arch  of  the  bough, 

The  luscious  fruitage  clustereth  mellowly, 

Golden-kernelled,  golden-cored, 

Sunset-ripened  above  on  the  tree  : 

The  world  is  wasted  with  fire  and  sword, 

But  the  apple  of  gold  hangs  over  the  sea.] 

It  has  not  the  weight  and  poise  of  the  other ;  it 
is  looser-textured  and  more  diaphanous ;  but  the 
two  have  the  same  essential  quality  of  romance  and 
magic.  This  also  Milton  knew ;  this  also  he  dis- 
carded in  his  ascent  to  the  summit. 

These  solemn  heights  but  to  the  stars  are  known, 
But  to  the  stars  and  the  cold  lunar  beams  : 

Alone  the  sun  arises,  and  alone 
Spring  the  great  streams. 

It  is  a  curious  question,  and  one  which  hardly 
arises  in  any  other  case,  what  position  Milton  would 
have  held  among  English  poets  if  he  had  died  at 
fifty.  He  would  have  been  represented  then  by  the 
volume  of  1645  and  by  about  a  dozen  sonnets.  We 
inevitably  read  all  that  earlier  poetry  by  the  reflected 
light  of  the  Paradise  Lost.  We  have  here  been 
engaged,  in  effect,  in  an  attempt  to  regard  it  apart 
from  that  reflected  light  and  by  itself.  It  is  easy 
to  see  now  to  what  it  all  tended,  how  it  represents 

L 


1 62  MILTON 

successive  layers  of  poetry,  as  one  might  say,  shed, 
stripped  off,  outgrown,  in  the  process  of  Milton's 
colossal  self-imposed  task  of  concentration.  It  is  easy 
to  see  now  that  in  these  earlier  poems  he  never  fully 
expressed  himself,  never  put  out  his  full  strength. 
They  were  exercises  in  his  art :  exercises  of  varying 
intricacy,  adjusted  to  the  particular  point  in  each  case 
that  his  long,  patient  self -education  had  reached. 
The  volume  in  which  he  collected  them  was  a 
record  of  progress  up  till  then.  In  such  a  record 
all  the  entries  were  in  a  sense  of  equal  value ;  for  if 
the  record  was  to  be  complete,  it  must  show  the 
whole  process  point  by  point.  It  must  have  been  for 
some  such  reason,  more  or  less  consciously  influenc- 
ng  his  mind,  that  he  gravely  set  down  the  laboured 
and  frigid  fragment  on  the  Passion,  or  the  quite 
worthless  set  of  commendatory  verses  that  he  had 
contributed  anonymously  to  the  second  folio  Shake- 
speare, side  by  side  with  the  Nativity  Hymn,  with 
the  Ode  at  a  Solemn  Music,  with  Comus  and  Lycidas. 
However  this  may  be,  the  great  difference  in  our 
view  of  Milton  if  he  had  not  lived  to  write  the 
Paradise  Lost  would  be  that  we  should  regard  him 
principally,  perhaps  almost  wholly,  as  a  lyric  poet. 
Even  those  pieces  which  are  not,  in  any  proper  or 
exact  use  of  the  term,  lyrical,  have  a  more  or  less 
close  affinity  to  the  lyric.  The  sonnet  is  only  sepa- 
rated from  the  lyric  by  narrow  and  rather  elusive 
boundaries ;  and  there  is  an  equally  close  though  a 


MILTON   AND   VIRGIL  163 

different  sort  of  affinity  between  the  lyric  and  the 
pastoral.  The  masque  likewise,  as  a  specific  form 
of  art  differing  from  the  drama  proper,  is  the  drama 
pushed  as  far  towards  lyrical  treatment  as  it  will  bear 
consistently  with  the  retention  of  dramatic  form. 
With  regard  to  the  Ludlow  Masque,  this  point  is 
acutely  seized  and  finely  brought  out  in  Sir  Henry 
Wotton's  celebrated  criticism  :  "  I  should  much  com- 
mend the  Tragical  part,  if  the  lyrical  did  not  ravish 
me  with  a  certain  Dorique  delicacy  in  your  Songs  and 
Odes,  whereunto  I  must  plainly  confess  to  have  seen 
yet  nothing  parallel  in  our  Language:  I-psa  mollities" 
As  a  drama,  as  a  representation  of  action,  the  Comus 
is  slight  and  unconvincing.  But  this  is  not  the  scope 
or  object  of  the  masque ;  action  in  it  is  merely  used 
as  a  slight  framework  for  giving  coherent  form  to  a 
pictorial,  reflective,  and  emotional  content  which  is 
in  its  essence  lyrical. 

The  mollifies,  the  delicacy,  which  the  Provost  of 
Eton  singled  out  as  the  distinctive  quality  of  Milton's 
work,  had  also  been  named  by  Horace  as  the  dis- 
tinctive quality  of  Virgil's  early  poetry.  It  conveys, 
in  both  cases,  the  sense  of  an  exquisite  and  fastidious 
refinement ;  and  in  neither  case  is  its  justice  impaired 
by  the  fact  that  the  poetry  in  question  bears  on  it 
the  stamp  of  immaturity.  In  that  very  immaturity 
lay  the  promise  of  the  future.  Both  poets  had  set 
before  themselves  an  ideal  in  poetry  towards  which 
the  labour  of  a  whole  lifetime  was  essential ;  neither 


164  MILTON 

of  them  would  be  hurried  ;  they  would  not  forestall 
the  slow  process  through  which  art,  no  less  than 
nature,  grows  into  perfection. 

Lo,  sweeten'd  by  the  summer  light 

The  full-juiced  apple,  waxing  over-mellow, 

Drops  in  the  silent  autumn  night. 

Between  the  Eclogues  and  the  Aeneid,  between  the 
Comus  and  the  Paradise  Lost,  the  interval  is  long. 
Much  was  dropped  on  the  difficult  ascent.  But  the 
ascent  was  made  at  last ;  and  we  have  now  among 
the  immortals,  not  the  author  of  the  Eclogues  and 
the  author  of  Comus  and  Lycidas,  but  Virgil  and 
Milton. 

Between  Lycidas  and  the  publication  of  the  Para- 
dise Lost  there  are  just  thirty  years.  They  were,  as 
regards  poetry,  years  of  silence ;  the  silence,  after 
the  burst  of  spring  flowerage,  of  the  long  brooding 
heats  of  summer,  during  which  the  year  comes  slowly 
to  its  maturity.  But  for  a  few  casual  scraps  of  trans- 
lation, Milton's  only  poetical  product  throughout 
them  was  a  very  few  sonnets  ;  solemn  and  rare 
indeed,  in  the  words  of  the  great  English  sonnet- 
writer, 

Since,  seldom  coming,  in  the  long  year  set, 
Like  stones  of  worth  they  thinly  placed  are, 
Or  captain  jewels  in  the  carcanet — 

but  only  giving  the  faintest  hint  of  the  immense 
power  in  reserve  behind  them,  like  the  flickers  that 
run  across  the  darkness  of  massed  clouds  behind 


SILENCE   IN   HEAVEN  165 

which  is  gathered  the  whole  armoury  of  heaven, 
nubila  sol  imbres  nix  venti  fulmina  grando. 

Earth  turned  in  her  sleep  with  pain, 

Sultrily  suspired  for  proof: 
In  at  heaven  and  out  again 

Lightning  ! — where  it  broke  the  roof, 
Bloodlike,  some  few  drops  of  rain. 

No  parallel  to  this  long  silence  between  the  prelude 
and  the  performance,  dead  silence  but  for  those  few 
low  trumpet-notes,  is  to  be  found,  I  think,  in  the 
history  of  poetry.  It  was  the  final  test  to  which 
Milton  put  his  powers. 

Sometimes  as  we  pass  along  the  streets  of  a  modern 
city,  we  come  at  nightfall  on  a  dark  mass  of  building, 
with  hardly  a  sign  of  life  about  it  except  a  light 
feather  of  steam  that  curls  from  a  huge  ventilating 
shaft.  As  we  come  nearer  we  can  catch  through  a 
crevice  in  furnace  doors  a  glimpse  of  some  great  in- 
candescence, we  can  hear  the  steady  purring  of  vast 
dynamos,  and  see  a  silent-footed  engineer  moving 
within  among  valves  and  pressure-gauges.  When 
the  hour  is  come,  it  is  but  the  pulling  across  of  a 
lever,  and  a  whole  region  glitters  with  light  and 
thrills  with  power.  Some  such  feeling  we  have  about 
Milton  in  that  long  central  period.  But  his  con- 
trolling motive  after  all  was  not  perfection  in  his  art 
—in  which  there  are  many  kinds  of  perfection — nor 
was  it  perfection  in  the  science  of  his  art,  in  which 
among  English  poets  he  still  stands,  as  he  stood  then, 


1 66  MILTON 

alone.  It  was  perfection  in  the  eye  of  his  great  Task- 
master. For  this  we  shall  find  no  adequate  symbolism 
in  the  arts  or  the  applied  sciences;  we  must  turn  from 
these  to  the  first  and  greatest  messengers  of  Puri- 
tanism. That  long  silence  was  unaffected  by  what 
went  on  in  the  outworks  of  his  life  ;  by  all  the  angry 
controversies  and  wasted  energies  and  household  un- 
happinesses  which  make  up  the  apparent  substance 
of  those  years.  All  the  while,  drop  by  drop,  con- 
tinually, the  reservoir  of  poetry  was  filling  up  in 
him  till  it  stood  abrim.  We  seem  to  be  in  a  vision 
such  as  rose  before  the  prophet  when  he  saw  by 
night.  "And  I  answered  again,  What  be  those  two 
olive  branches  which  through  the  two  golden  pipes 
empty  the  golden  oil  out  of  themselves  ?  And  he 
answered  me  and  said,  Knowest  thou  not  what  these 
be  ?  and  I  said,  No,  my  lord.  Then  said  he,  These 
are  the  two  Anointed  Ones  that  stand  by  the  Lord 
of  the  whole  earth." 


II 

IN  1642,  Milton,  then  in  his  thirty-fourth  year,  writes 
of  himself  as  "  not  having  yet  completed  to  my  mind 
the  full  circle  of  my  private  studies."  That  circle 
he  was  already  doomed  never  to  complete.  His 
eyesight,  overtaxed  from  early  youth,  was  failing. 
When  he  accepted  the  post  of  Latin  Secretary  to  the 
Commonwealth  in  the  spring  of  1649,  it  was  with 
the  distinct  knowledge  that  the  work  it  involved 
meant  early  blindness.  A  year  afterwards  the  sight 
of  the  left  eye  was  gone  ;  in  two  years  more  he  was 
totally  blind. 

To  any  ordinary  man  this  would  have  meant  the 
end.  He  had  built  great  bases  for  eternity,  and  was 
struck  down  while  the  masses  of  material  and  of 
acquirement  that  he  had  spent  his  life  in  collecting 
were  still  only  a  potential  structure.  He  had  staked 
all  on  the  one  throw  and  seemed  to  have  lost  it. 
Like  the  builders  on  the  plain  of  Sennaar,  he  had 
"  cast  to  build  a  city  and  tower  whose  top  may  reach 
to  heaven."  Dis  aliter  vimm  :  and  all  that  was  left 
of  that  vast  project  seemed  to  be  the  grim  epitaph, 

Thus  was  the  building  left 

Ridiculous,  and  the  work  Confusion  named. 

167 


1 68  MILTON 

Even  Milton's  own  haughty  courage  nearly  gave 
way  under  that  crushing  blow.  Tears,  like  laughter, 
were  among  the  things  that  he  had  put  away  from 
him.  But  there  breaks  from  him  one  low  piercing 
cry  of  pain. 

My  light  is  spent 

Ere  half  my  days,  in  this  dark  world  and  wide, 
And  that  one  talent  which  is  death  to  hide 
Lodg'd  with  me  useless. 

For  a  while  he  sought  refuge  in  a  cold  and  profound 
thought,  like  that  of  the  Stoic  Emperor  :  "  God  doth 
not  need  either  man's  work,  or  his  own  gifts  " ;  or, 
with  a  transcendental  and  inverted  humility,  strove  to 
accept  the  service  of  those  who  only  stand  and  wait. 
He  plunged  deeper  than  ever  into  angry  political 
controversy,  striking  fiercely  right  and  left  in  a  mood 
careless  alike  of  his  own  self-respect  or  of  effective 
results.  He  sought  narcotics  in  mechanical  tasks  of 
compilation.  His  first  unhappy  marriage  had  come 
to  an  end  with  the  death  of  Mary  Powell,  just  about 
the  time  when  his  blindness  became  total.  He  mar- 
ried again.  Some  gleam  of  happiness  that  came  into 
his  life  then  was  quenched  fifteen  months  later  when 
the  "  espoused  saint  "  whom,  in  the  most  touching  of 
all  his  poems,  he  calls  "  love,  sweetness,  goodness," 
died  in  childbed.  But  in  that  brief  interval  he  had 
summoned  back  his  full  courage,  and  set  steadily  to 
work  on  the  composition  of  the  Paradise  Lost. 
The  scheme  of  the  great  epic  had,  as  is  well 


THE   PARADISE   LOST  169 

known,  been  taking  shape  in  his  mind  for  many 
years.  It  was  practically  settled  in  its  main  outline 
when  he  returned  from  abroad  in  1639.  The  definite 
adoption  of  the  epic  and  not  the  dramatic  form,  after 
long  balancing  between  the  two,  was  only  made  some 
years  later.  According  to  the  well-attested  story 
about  the  lines  which  open  Satan's  monologue  at  the 
beginning  of  the  fourth  book,  that  passage,  and  some 
others,  had  been  actually  written  as  early  as  1642. 
The  substance  and  even  the  very  wording  of  the  poem 
had  been  slowly  distilling  in  his  mind  long  before 
he  set  himself  to  continuous  composition.  Some  five 
years  or  more  passed  in  this  task.  According  to 
Aubrey,  the  poem  was  substantially  complete  by  the 
summer  of  1663.  It  was  two  years  later  that  Ell- 
wood  read  it  in  manuscript.  It  was  no  doubt  sub- 
jected to  much  further  detailed  revision  before  it 
passed  the  licenser  and  went  to  press  in  the  spring  of 
1667.  All  that  revision  had  to  be  conducted  under 
the  same  overwhelming  difficulties  as  had  to  be  con- 
quered before  it  could  take  written  shape  at  all. 
For  those  who  have  themselves  practised  the  refine- 
ments of  written  composition,  who  know  how  the 
judgment  is  dependent  on  the  eye,  and  what  per- 
petual reference  back  and  forward  a  finished  revision 
involves,  the  achievement  of  the  double  task  will  be 
recognised  as  implying  a  grasp  and  power  that  are 
almost  superhuman.  In  the  fine  and  just  words  of 
De  Quincey,  the  Paradise  Lost  is  not  a  book  among 


MILTON 

books,  not  a  poem  among  poems,  but  a  central  force 
among  forces.  That  amazing  power  had  to  work 
through  a  machinery  as  cumbrous  as  it  was  imperfect. 
It  had  to  hold  in  place,  and  record  through  casual 
hands  as  opportunity  was  given,  the  vast  scheme  of 
the  poem  and  the  minutest  adjustments  of  diction, 
rhythm,  and  period.  It  had  to  carry  the  whole 
substance  of  the  epic  in  solution,  and  deposit  it,  cell 
by  cell,  exactly  at  the  right  place,  and  exactly  in  the 
right  order.  Composed  in  darkness,  brooded  over 
in  memory,  dictated  in  fragments,  it  all  fell  into 
place.  We  can  hardly  imagine  any  material  altera- 
tion if,  like  Virgil,  he  had  been  able  to  keep  the 
manuscript  beside  him  and  give  to  it  at  will,  day 
by  day,  the  final  touches  of  a  patient  and  fastidious 
hand.  Blind  Masonides  is  but  a  shadowy  tradition, 
even  if  we  do  not,  with  some  modern  critics,  first 
deny  the  existence  of  Homer  and  then,  logically 
enough,  and  inevitably,  deny  the  existence  of  the 
Iliad.  Among  the  great  artists  of  the  modern  world 
Beethoven  alone  presents  even  a  remote  parallel  to 
Milton's  achievement.  Viewed  thus,  the  Paradise  Lost 
may  well  seem  to  us  the  most  astonishing  of  all  the 
products  of  high  genius  guided  by  unconquerable  will. 
For  what  is  most  remarkable  about  the  Paradise 
Lost  is  not  so  much  the  greatness  of  its  conception, 
though  that  is  wonderful ;  it  is  not  so  much  the 
height  and  amplitude  of  imagination  through  which 
the  conception  is  embodied,  though  these  are  splen- 


THE   PARADISE   LOST  171 

did  :  it  is  the  sustained  and  all  but  faultless  perfec- 
tion of  the  execution.  Here  and  there  we  may  see, 
or  think  we  see,  a  slip  or  a  flaw.  In  different  parts 
of  the  poem  there  are  distinct  differences  of  work- 
manship ;  there  are  even  differences,  less  distinct 
but  still  traceable,  of  what  is  another  thing,  quality 
of  workmanship.  The  fine  close-woven  texture 
shows,  on  minute  inspection,  not  only  the  variation 
which  all  the  products  of  really  great  art  show  by 
virtue  of  their  being  organic  and  not  machine-made 
products,  but  places  where  the  mind  has  wandered, 
or  the  hand  flagged,  or  the  tool  slipped.  When  we 
have  taken  full  account  of  these,  it  remains  true  that 
here  we  have  a  poem  of  over  ten  thousand  lines  in 
which  the  workmanship  throughout  is  such  as  had 
been  in  English  poetry  previously  undreamed  of, 
such  as  has  never  been  since  equalled,  such  as  we 
cannot  imagine  ever  being  surpassed  by  any  human 
skill.  In  the  science  of  his  art  Milton  is  our  one 
absolute  master.  Of  him  in  poetry  as  of  Bach  in 
music  it  may  be  said  that  they  fix  a  limit.  Other 
kinds  of  perfection  there  may  be  ;  but  beyond  their 
perfection  no  one  may  go.  Either  of  them  might  have 
adopted  as  his  the  superb  claim  made  for  his  own 
achievement  in  art  by  the  Greek  painter  Parrhasius  : 

Et  KOI  airta-TO,  K\VOVCTI  Xe-yco  raSe'    <pt]/uu  yap  ^tj 
evpqcrQai  Te^vr^  Tep/naTa  TtjcrSe  (rcuptj 

X«|009  v<p' 
oupo$' 


172  MILTON 

"  This  I  say,  even  though  they  that  hear  believe 
not :  I  declare  that  the  clear  limits  of  this  art  have 
been  found  under  my  hand,  and  the  goal  is  set  that 
may  not  be  overpassed,  though  there  is  no  human 
work  with  which  fault  may  not  be  found." 

In  the  main  we  are  justified  in  believing  that  the 
Paradise  Lost,  as  it  at  last  appeared,  satisfied  Milton's 
own  impeccable  ear  and  merciless  judgment.  So 
much  may  be  gathered,  though  doubtfully,  from  the 
fact  that  he  published  it  with  no  word  of  depreca- 
tion, and  that  his  prefatory  note  explaining  his 
choice  of  unrhymed  verse  has  the  tone  of  a  workman 
who  is  well  content  with  his  own  work.  But  there 
is  further  confirmation  in  the  fact  that  he  left  it  mate- 
rially unaltered  when  he  republished  it  seven  years 
later.  That  second  edition  is  described  as  "  revised 
and  augmented  by  the  author."  But  the  revision, 
though  evidently  careful  and  even  minute,  resulted 
in  few  changes  and  next  to  no  augmentations. 
Apart  from  alterations  of  single  words — and  there 
are  not  many  even  of  these — there  are  only  seven 
instances  in  which  a  passage  is  reworded  or  an  addi- 
tion made.  Two  of  these  are  the  exquisite  passages, 
of  four  lines  in  one  case  and  five  in  the  other,  inserted 
at  what  became  the  beginnings  of  the  eighth  and 
twelfth  books  when  he  redivided  the  original  ten 
books  into  twelve.  Three  new  lines  were  inserted 
in  the  description  of  the  lazar-house  in  the  eleventh 
book ;  in  no  one  of  the  other  four  instances  does  the 


THE   PARADISE   LOST  173 

alteration  made  affect  a  passage  of  more  than  four 
lines. 

If  we  read  the  Paradise  Lost  through  with  a 
careful  eye  on  the  diction  and  versification,  we  can 
distinguish  in  it,  as  we  can  distinguish  in  the  Aeneid, 
strata  of  earlier  and  later  work.  The  differences 
are  very  subtle  ;  they  do  not  affect  the  general  unity 
of  style  and  texture.  To  appreciate  them  is  perhaps 
the  last  reward  given  to  the  trained  student  in  lan- 
guage and  the  expert  in  prosody.  Thus  the  seventh 
book  shows  a  marked  predilection  for  lines  with  a 
pause  at  the  end  of  the  first  or  fourth  foot,  and  the 
eleventh  for  lines  made  up  of  monosyllabic  words. 
Three  speeches  in  Books  IX.  and  X.  are  respec- 
tively in  what,  within  the  bounds  of  his  fully  de- 
veloped and  as  yet  unimpaired  mastery  of  style,  may 
be  called  Milton's  early,  middle,  and  late  manner. 
The  speech  of  Satan  to  Eve  in  Book  IX.,  beginning 
"  Empress  of  this  fair  world,"  is  in  a  manner  not 
far  removed  from  the  poetical  manner  of  the  Comus, 
simpler  and  more  fluid,  less  fully  charged  and  less 
closely  woven  than  the  characteristic  manner  of 
Milton's  maturity. 

Till  on  a  day  roving  the  field,  I  chanced 
A  goodly  tree  far  distant  to  behold, 
Loaden  with  fruit  of  fairest  colours  mixt, 
Ruddy  and  gold  :  I  nearer  drew  to  gaze  : 
When  from  the  boughs  a  savoury  odour  blown, 
Grateful  to  appetite,  more  pleased  my  sense 
Than  smell  of  sweetest  fennel,  or  the  teats 


174  MILTON 

Of  ewe  or  goat  dropping  with  milk  at  even, 
Unsucked  of  lamb  or  kid  that  tend  their  play. 

These  lines  might  be  put  into  the  part  of  the  Atten- 
dant Spirit  in  the  Comus  without  seeming  strange  or 
out  of  place.  Satan's  monologue,  earlier  in  the  same 
book,  beginning,  "  O  earth  how  like  to  heaven  !  " 
is  in  Milton's  culminating  manner,  the  manner 
which  is  kept  up  without  a  single  swerve  through 
the  first  four  books,  and  which  is  the  reason  why 
those  four  books  are  generally,  and  not  unjustly, 
held  to  be  the  crown  of  Milton's  whole  work  in 
poetry.  This  speech  is  equal  to  anything  in  the 
first  half  of  the  poem,  and  to  a  certain  extent,  though 
not  to  such  an  extent  as  causes  any  jar,  stands  out 
in  virtue  of  that  quality  from  its  surroundings.  A 
little  further  on,  Adam's  soliloquy  in  the  tenth  book, 
beginning,  "  O  miserable  of  happy  !  is  this  the  end  ?  " 
anticipates  the  manner  of  the  Paradise  Regained. 
The  structure  is  less  periodic,  the  rhythm  more 
broken ;  the  evolution  of  thought  often  proceeds, 
one  might  almost  say,  by  jerks,  not  under  a  single 
controlling  movement.  The  whole  speech  bears  dis- 
tinct traces  of  rhetoric  ;  it  is  the  single  speech  in  the 
whole  poem  of  which  one  would  be  inclined  to  say 
that  it  was  too  long;  parts  of  it  are  even  curiously 
unpoetical. 

Yet  it  does  not  follow  necessarily,  nor  even  pro- 
bably, that  these  three  passages  were  written  at  long 
successive  intervals,  and  are  early,  middle,  and  late 


THE   PARADISE  LOST  175 

in  their  origin  as  they  are  in  the  colour  of  their 
style.  For  if  we  regard  them  in  their  whole  context, 
we  shall  see  that  their  variation  is  almost  scientifi- 
cally adjusted,  and  is  evidence  not  only  of  Milton's 
certainty  of  hand,  but  of  a  quality  for  which  he 
seldom  or  never  gets  the  full  credit  due  to  him,  a 
dramatic  sense  of  extreme  delicacy.  With  him,  as 
with  Sophocles,  this  quality  is  so  fine  that  it  may 
easily  elude  observation.  Like  the  best  Greek  sculp- 
ture, it  works  of  set  purpose  within  narrow  limits, 
and  to  the  ordinary  eye  the  surface  seems  flat  which 
is  really  alive  with  subtle  modelling,  and,  in  Milton's 
own  apt  words,  is 

inimitable  on  earth 
By  model  or  by  shading  pencil  drawn. 

The  construction  is  at  every  point  organic ;  in 
the  phrase  of  architects,  elle  ne  dort  jamais.  The 
manner,  diction,  and  metrical  quality  of  these  three 
passages  which  I  have  cited  are  in  each  case  adapted 
with  precise  fitness  to  the  circumstances.  Those 
of  Satan's  speech  to  Eve,  with  their  relaxed  fluency 
and  calculated  simplicity,  are  in  the  character  which 
he  has  assumed,  for  the  purpose  of  skilful  decep- 
tion, of  the  brute  who  has  just  found  human  sense 
and  language,  and  still  uses  both  with  an  accent  of 
strangeness,  of  imperfect  concentration,  of  incom- 
plete mastery.  They  are  completely  different  from 
those  of  the  ruined  archangel  uttering  his  own 


176  MILTON 

thought  and  speaking  in  his  own  person.  Those  of 
Adam's  long  soliloquy  are  adapted  with  equal  nicety 
to  the  person  of  one  whose  mind  and  senses  are  reel- 
ing under  the  first  shock  of  his  fall.  The  founda- 
tions of  his  life  are  crumbling  beneath  him.  He  has 
lost,  with  his  innocence,  not  only  his  self-confidence, 
but  his  lucidity  of  intelligence,  his  power  of  sustained 
reasoning,  his  control  of  language,  and  even  his  sense 
of  truth.  His  life  has  ceased  to  be  a  poem,  and  his 
words  reflect  the  change.  He  can  conclude  no- 
thing ;  he  can  fix  his  mind  nowhere.  His  turmoil  of 
thought  issues  in  confused  and  broken  language. 
He  can  follow  out  no  train  of  reasoning ;  he  circles 
round  in  a  maze,  trying  ineffectually  to  find  refuge 
in  rhetorical  sophistries.  His  very  language,  parti- 
cipating in  the  intellectual  and  moral  abasement,  be- 
comes harsh  and  all  but  prosaic.  The  way  in  which 
Milton  manages  this  without  letting  go  his  hold  over 
the  sustained  workmanship  of  the  whole  poem  is  no 
sign  of  late  composition  or  lessening  power ;  it  is 
one  of  the  highest  proofs  which  the  poem  shows  of 
combined  skill  and  daring,  of  the  complete  control 
which  its  author  had  over  the  science  and  mechanism 
of  his  art. 

It  is  true  that  in  this  and  the  two  following  books 
(the  tenth,  eleventh,  and  twelfth)  there  are  other 
traces,  if  not  of  diminishing  power,  yet  of  a  certain 
lessening  of  concentration  and  tension.  The  texture 
of  the  poetry  in  places  becomes  sensibly  looser;  there 


THE   PARADISE   LOST  177 

are  passages  where  the  material  has  not  been  perfectly 
fused.  We  can  note  instances,  here  and  there,  of  a 
reversion  to  Elizabethanism.  We  can  note  others  in 
a  harder  and  drier  manner,  such  as  was  coming  over 
Milton  when  he  wrote  the  Paradise  Regained.  There 
are  one  or  two  instances  in  which  classical  ornament, 
as  though  he  felt  this  harder  manner  growing  on  him 
and  wished  to  give  it  some  artificial  counterpoise,  is 
attached  rather  than  organically  incorporated. 

Nor  important  less 

Seemed  their  petition,  than  when  the  ancient  pair, 
In  fables  old,  less  ancient  yet  than  these, 
Deucalion  and  chaste  Pyrrha,  to  restore 
The  race  of  mankind  drown'd,  before  the  shrine 
Of  Themis  stood  devout. 

The  rhythm  and  phrasing  have  all  the  old  skill ;  but 
the  way  in  which  the  comparison  is  introduced  and 
expanded  seems  now  something  like  artifice.  Or 
again,  later  in  the  same  book,  in  the  description  of 
the  descent  of  the  cherubim  : 

Four  faces  each 

Had,  like  a  double  Janus  ;  all  their  shape 
Spangled  with  eyes  more  numerous  than  those 
Of  Argus,  and  more  wakeful  than  to  drowse, 
Charmed  with  Arcadian  pipe,  the  pastoral  reed 
Of  Hermes,  or  his  opiate  rod.     Meanwhile, 
To  resalute  the  world  with  sacred  light 
Leucothea  waked. 

It  is  exquisitely  beautiful ;  but  it  is  on  the  point  of 
becoming  ornament  for  ornament's  sake  :  it  trembles 
on  the  verge  of  classicism. 

M 


178  MILTON 

In  the  eleventh  book,  again,  alongside  of  passages 
where  a  harsh  inversion  or  an  elliptic  syntax  is  in 
Milton's  latest  manner : 

But  longer  in  that  paradise  to  dwell 
The  law  I  gave  to  nature  him  forbids, 

or 

But  who  was  that  just  man,  whom  had  not  heaven 
Rescued,  had  in  his  righteousness  been  lost  ? 

we  find  phrases  which  are  almost  purely  Shake- 
spearian ;  and  others  where  an  unaccustomed  gentle- 
ness of  thought  seems  to  reflect  itself  in  a  new  and 
exquisite  delicacy  of  rhythm  ;  as  in 

One  short  sigh  of  human  breath,  upborne 
Even  to  the  seat  of  God, 

and  once  more  a  little  further  on, 

For  see  !  the  morn, 

All  unconcern'd  with  our  unrest,  begins 
Her  rosy  progress,  smiling. 

It  is  worth  noting  that  these  last  two  phrases,  with 
their  tender  and  luminous  beauty,  both  occur  in 
the  scene  of  reconciliation  between  Adam  and  Eve : 
they  are  another  instance  of  that  subtle  dramatic 
instinct  in  Milton  which  discloses  itself  to  more  re- 
fined analysis — or  rather,  for  this  is  the  real  truth, 
to  sufficiently  careful  reading. 

Only  in  the  twelfth  book,  where  Michael  sum- 
marises the  history  of  the  world  from  the  Flood  to 
the  Second  Coming,  can  we  say  definitely  that  the 


THE   PARADISE   LOST  179 

style  here  and  there  does  flag,  the  theological  hand- 
ling is  not  wholly  fused  into  poetry.  The  speech  of 
Michael  (11.  386-465)  is  a  sermon  forged  into  verse, 
with  immense  skill,  but  not  with  complete  success ; 
for  complete  success  was  here  in  the  nature  of  things 
impossible.  It  is  a  majestic  homily,  but  Milton  has 
deliberately  chosen  that  it  shall  be  this,  and  not 
poetry.  It  was  the  last  sacrifice  he  made  in  the 
ascent  towards  perfection ;  for  the  perfection  now 
before  him  was  a  spiritual  perfection  where,  as  at  the 
conclusion  of  Dante's  Paradiso,  desire  and  will  still 
ascend,  but  imagination  succumbs  :  aW  aha  fantasia 
qui  mancb  possa.  In  the  furnace-heat  of  that  perfec- 
tion art  itself  sublimates  and  disappears. 

It  is  this  sustained,  all  but  flawless  excellence  of 
workmanship  throughout  the  whole  poem  which, 
beyond  all  else,  gives  the  Paradise  Lost  its  enduring 
value.  It  is  independent  of  any  view  which  later 
generations  have  taken,  or  may  take,  of  the  quality 
of  its  subject  or  of  the  theological  system  on  which 
the  poem  is  founded.  No  doubt  Milton  was  deter- 
mined in  his  own  choice  by  the  belief  which  he  shared 
with  the  whole  of  Christendom,  that  the  Bible  narra- 
tive of  the  Fall  was  historically  true,  and  of  the  most 
momentous  truth.  But  what  matters  is  not  the 
subject  chosen,  or  the  reasons  for  choosing  it  :  what 
matters  is  the  use  made  of  it.  If  the  human  mind 
came  to  the  conclusion,  not  merely  that  the  narrative 
was  untrue  in  fact,  but  that  it  was  false  in  essence, 


i8o  MILTON 

the  poem  would  as  a  work  of  art  be  left  intact.  To 
Milton  himself  on  his  own  system  of  belief  the 
ancient  mythology  and  the  systems  based  on  it  had 
this  very  quality  of  essential  falsehood  ;  but  they 
meant  none  the  less  to  him.  He  did  not  assert- for 
his  own  work  any  other  renown,  any  other  immor- 
tality, than  the  renown  and  the  immortality  of  Homer. 
It  is  true,  no  doubt,  that  he  claims,  in  the  majestic 
prologue  to  the  seventh  book  of  the  Paradise  Lost, 
that  the  Urania  whom  he  invokes  is  not  one  of  the 
nine  Muses,  but  sister  of  the  Eternal  Wisdom  ;  that 
she  is  heavenly,  the  others  an  empty  dream.  So  he 
says  ;  but  in  the  very  act  of  saying  it  he  has  himself 
returned  into  that  world  of  dreams,  and  confessed 
that  he  too  is  an  artist,  and  that  his  own  work  is  art. 
The  workmanship,  the  science  and  skill  of  that 
art,  not  only  gives  the  Paradise  Lost  enduring  value  ; 
it  also  gives  it  endless  interest.  Milton's  technical 
skill  is  only  now  receiving  full  recognition.  This  is 
not  an  occasion  to  enter  on  a  study  of  his  use  of  lan- 
guage and  metre.  Such  a  study,  to  be  useful,  must 
needs  be  both  minute  and  detailed.  Mr.  Robert 
Bridges,  in  his  Essay  on  Milton's  Prosody,  has  dealt 
with  one  aspect  of  it  in  this  way,  bringing  to  the 
task  the  qualifications  of  a  trained  student  of  lan- 
guage and  a  skilled  musician.  There  are  few,  he 
says  at  the  end  of  his  analysis  of  the  verse  of  the 
Paradise  Lost,  who  will  pursue  this  path  any  further. 
I  do  not  here  attempt  to  pursue  it  so  far.  But  I 


MILTON'S  VERSE  181 

may  just  indicate  a  direction  for  its  pursuit  from  the 
point  where  Mr.  Bridges'  more  severely  technical 
method  stops.  Analysis  of  the  Miltonic  metre  takes 
us  but  part  of  the  way  unless  it  is  continued  into 
analysis  of  the  rhythmic  or  prosodic  structure  into 
which  that  metre  is  built  up — or  rather  we  should 
say,  into  which  that  metre  grows  through  processes 
which  are  vital,  organic,  and  creative.  A  study  of 
Milton's  line  is  but  the  prelude  to  a  study  of 
Milton's  period. 

On  its  formal  side,  what  makes  Milton's  versifica- 
tion as  unique  as  it  is  admirable,  is  the  instinctive 
and  yet  prescient  skill  with  which  the  pause  is  con- 
tinuously varied  so  as  to  keep  the  whole  metrical 
structure  in  movement.  There  are  no  dead  lines. 
There  are  no  jerks  or  stoppages.  His  movement 
may  best  be  described  by  quoting  a  passage  which, 
like  many  others,  is  at  once  a  description  and  an 
instance.  It  is  a 

Mystical  dance,  which  yonder  starry  sphere 
Of  planets  and  of  fixt  in  all  her  wheels 
Resembles  nearest,  mazes  intricate, 
Eccentric,  intervolv'd,  yet  regular 
Then  most,  when  most  irregular  they  seem, 
And  in  their  motions  harmony  divine. 

I  ask  the  reader  most  particularly  to  notice  that  these 
six  lines,  like  almost  any  short  quotation  that  can  be 
made  from  the  poem,  are  broken  from  their  context. 
They  begin  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence,  and  end  in 


1 82  MILTON 

the  middle  of  a  clause.  The  continuous  periodic 
movement  cannot  be  really  shown  by  examples,  just 
because  it  is  continuous  and  periodic.  If  we  except 
the  speeches,  each  of  which  by  the  necessity  of  the 
case  is  more  or  less  a  definite  and  detachable  unit, 
the  periods  flow  into  one  another.  Like  the  orbit 
of  a  planet,  the  movement  of  the  verse  never  closes 
its  ellipse  and  begins  again.  Each  of  the  twelve 
books  is  a  single  organic  rhythmical  structure.  But 
one  cannot  very  well  quote  a  whole  book. 

Within  that  structure,  the  variation  of  pause  and 
stress  is  similarly  in  continuous  movement.  As  a 
general  fact  this  is  instinctively  felt  in  reading  the 
poem  ;  how  rigorously  the  law  of  freedom  is  observed 
comes  out  even  more  surprisingly  when  brought 
to  the  test  of  figures.  For  movement  of  stress 
one  instance  may  serve  as  a  typical  example.  In 
Michael's  description  of  the  plagues  of  Egypt  in  the 
twelfth  book,  beginning — 

But  first  the  lawless  tyrant,  who  denies 

To  know  their  God,  or  message  to  regard, 

Must  be  compelled  by  signs  and  judgments  dire — 

the  detailed  roll  of  the  plagues  is  all  threaded  on  the 
word  must.  It  recurs  nine  times,  with  studied  and 
intricate  variation  of  its  place  in  the  line :  this  is, 
taken  by  order,  in  the  first,  eighth,  fifth,  fourth,  fifth, 
fifth,  first,  third,  and  fourth  syllable.  Again,  as 
regards  variation  of  pause,  in  the  whole  ten  thousand 


MILTON'S   VERSE  183 

lines  of  the  Paradise  Lost  there  are  less  than  fi  ve-and- 
twenty  instances  of  the  pause  coming  at  the  same 
point  in  the  line  for  more  than  two  lines  consecu- 
tively. Facts  like  these  are  the  formal  index  of  what 
is  the  great  organic  principle  of  Milton's  verse.  That 
is,  that  like  all  organic  structures,  it  is  incalculable  ; 
it  cannot  be  reduced  to  a  formula.  It  has  in  it  that 
clinamen  principiorum  which  the  Epicurean  philo- 
sophy put  forward  as  the  explanation  of  freewill,  and 
which,  or  something  in  effect  equivalent  to  which, 
the  most  recent  science  suggests  as  the  explanation, 
or  at  least  the  formula,  of  life  itself.  His  rhythm 
is  perpetually  integrating  as  it  advances ;  and  not 
only  so,  but  at  no  point  can  its  next  movement 
be  predicted,  although  tracing  it  backwards  we 
can  see  how  each  phrase  rises  out  of  and  carries 
on  the  rhythm  of  what  was  before  it,  how  each 
comes  in  not  only  rightly,  but  as  it  seems  inevi- 
tably. This  secret  he  inherited  from  no  English 
predecessor  and  transmitted  to  no  follower.  The 
two  poets  who  showed  him  the  way  were  Virgil  and 
Sophocles.  For  while  in  his  poetical  manner,  in  the 
evolution  of  his  thought  and  what  may  be  called  the 
rhetorical  structure  of  the  poetry,  he  is  more  akin 
to  Ovid  and  Euripides,  it  is  the  elder  and  greater 
poets  whom  he  recalls  in  the  essential  quality  of  his 
art.  Of  the  .two,  his  art  is  more  akin  to  that  of 
Sophocles  in  virtue  of  the  apparent  ease  with  which 
he  wields  it,  of  its  complete  scientific  mastery,  and  of 


1 84  MILTON 

a  severe  self-restraint  that  may  easily  be  mistaken 
for  frigidity  ;  the  exact  opposite  of  the  nether  con- 
tinent described  in  the  Paradise  Lost  as  beyond  the 
stream  of  Lethe,  where 

the  parching  air 
Burns  frore,  and  cold  performs  the  effect  of  fire. 

But  with  Virgil's  art  also  Milton's  has  some  points 
of  striking  analogy,  particularly  in  the  structure  of 
his  periods.  Both  habitually  practise  an  artifice 
almost  peculiar  to  them,  that  of  carrying  on  the 
period  for  another  line  after  it  seems  to  have  ended. 
This  hardly  comes  out  clearly  in  any  single  in- 
stance, and  therefore  I  do  not  offer  one  ;  it  is  a 
quality  that  must  be  appreciated  in  its  cumulative 
effect.  The  effect  is  neither  that  of  a  final  clenching 
stroke,  as  it  is  very  remarkably  in  Dante,  nor  that 
of  a  dying  cadence  or  echo,  in  the  way  in  which  it 
is  often  very  beautifully  employed  by  Spenser  ;  it  is 
rather  that  of  an  enrichment,  a  superflux,  as  of  water 
that  arches  itself  in  a  full  glass  above  the  level  of 
the  brim.  It  is  analogous,  in  its  structural  and 
harmonic  value,  to  an  overbrimming  quality  which 
Milton  and  Virgil  both  share  with  Sophocles  in  their 
use  of  words.  Language  as  they  use  it  is  many- 
faceted,  full  of  harmonic  undertones,  of  allusion 
and  suggestion.  It  unfolds  and  changes  colour  as 
we  look  on  it.  The  effect  is  more  easily  felt  than 
described  or  analysed ;  it  lies  so  much  at  the  heart 


MILTON'S   PHRASING  185 

of  the  poetry  that  it  is  only  through  the  medium  of 
poetry  that  it  can  be  at  all  adequately  expressed. 
We  may  be  reminded  of  Tennyson's  lines  about  the 
soul  passing  through  her  palace  of  art — 

And  all  things  that  she  saw  she  multiplied, 
A  many-faced  glass  ; 

And  being  both  the  sower  and  the  seed, 

Remaining  in  herself,  became 
All  that  she  saw,  Madonna,  Ganymede, 

Or  the  Asiatic  dame  ; 

Still  changing,  as  a  lighthouse  in  the  night 

Changeth  athwart  the  gleaming  main 
From  red  to  yellow,  yellow  to  pale  white, 

Then  back  to  red  again. 

This  overbrimming  quality  of  language  is  at  once 
the  cause  and  the  effect  of  the  concentration  of  phrase 
in  Milton's  mature  work.  We  have  already  seen 
how  in  the  act  of  writing  the  Comus  he  struck  out  a 
whole  passage,  and  at  a  later  point  in  the  poem 
gave  its  whole  imaginative  essence  in  a  single  line. 
Similar  instances  may  be  found  in  the  Paradise  Lost. 
Sometimes  the  concentration  is  so  great  that  it  defeats 
its  own  purpose ;  the  overbrimmed  glass  is  shaken 
and  spilt.  One  instance  may  be  propounded  for 
consideration.  Here  is  a  famous  passage  in  the 
Comus,  written  under  the  impulse  of  Milton's  early 
romanticism  and  with  Elizabethan  richness. 

Till  an  unusual  stop  of  sudden  silence — 


1 86  MILTON 

(even  so  early  as  this  the  periodic  structure  of 
Milton's  verse  is  so  fully  developed  that  one  is 
obliged  to  begin  the  quotation  in  the  middle  of  a 
sentence) — 

Till  an  unusual  stop  of  sudden  silence 
Gave  respite  to  the  drowsy  frighted  steeds 
That  draw  the  litter  of  close-curtain'd  Sleep  ; 
At  last  a  soft  and  solemn-breathing  sound 
Rose  like  a  steam  of  rich  distill'd  perfumes, 
And  stole  upon  the  air,  that  even  Silence 
Was  took  ere  she  was  ware,  and  wish'd  she  might 
Deny  her  nature,  and  be  never  more, 
Still  to  be  so  displac'd. 

Now  turn  to  the  fourth  book  of  the  Paradise  Lost : 
Silence  was  -pleased.  How  much  of  the  imaginative 
value,  how  much  of  the  poetical  quality  of  the  earlier 
passage  has  Milton  carried  into  these  three  bare 
words,  into  this  needle-point  of  concentration  ?  how 
much  has  he  abandoned,  deliberately  and  counting 
the  cost  ?  The  merchantman  who  sold  all  he  had 
to  buy  the  one  pearl  must  have  been  gravely  em- 
barrassed if  he  found  himself  penniless  and  his  pearl 
unmarketable.  But  Milton  at  least  did  not  falter  in 
his  choice. 

In  his  later  work  this  concentration  in  the  use  of 
language  goes  so  far  that  he  begins  to  write,  one 
might  say,  in  a  sort  of  shorthand.  There  are  whole 
passages  in  the  Paradise  Regained  which  give  the 
effect  of  a  piece  of  empty  honeycomb  ;  the  delicate, 
scientifically  adjusted,  faultless  structure  has  been 


MILTON'S   PHRASING  187 

set  in  its  place,  but  is  waiting  still  for  the  liquid 
gold  to  be  poured  into  it  and  fill  it  to  the  brim. 

So  spake  the  Eternal  Father,  and  all  heaven 
Admiring  stood  a  space,  then  into  hymns 
Burst  forth,  and  in  celestial  measures  moved, 
Circling  the  throne  and  singing,  while  the  hand 
Sung  with  the  voice,  and  this  the  argument. 

This  should  be  the  prelude  to  some  great  choral 
symphony  such  as  those  of  the  Paradise  Lost.  But 
instead  of  that,  what  follows  is  what  it  would  not 
be  unfair  to  call  an  abstract  or  precis  of  the  un- 
written ode.  It  is  executed  with  Milton's  unfailing 
metrical  skill,  but,  except  for  that,  little  removed  in 
its  quality  from  prose. 

Victory  and  triumph  to  the  Son  of  God, 

Now  entering  his  great  duel,  not  of  arms, 

But  to  vanquish  by  wisdom  hellish  wiles  ! 

The  Father  knows  the  Son  ;  therefore  secure 

Ventures  his  filial  virtue,  though  untried, 

Against  whate'er  may  tempt,  whate'er  seduce, 

Allure,  or  terrify,  or  undermine. 

Be  frustrate,  all  ye  stratagems  of  hell, 

And,  devilish  machinations,  come  to  nought  ! 

This  is  not  the  organ-music  that  we  knew.  What's 
become  of  all  the  gold  ?  Has  the  golden  oil  ceased 
to  flow  into  the  lamp  now  that  night  is  so  deep  ? 

This  condensation  rather  than  concentration — 
what  I  have  ventured  to  call  a  kind  of  poetical 
shorthand — is  strongly  marked  in  many  passages 
of  the  Paradise  Regained.  Sometimes  it  takes  the 


1 88  MILTON 

form  of  a  string  of  clauses  in  apposition,  sometimes 
of  a  highly  elliptical  construction,  which  in  either 
case  amounts  to  a  deliberate  neglect  of  constructive 
quality. 

Expert  in  amorous  arts,  enchanting  tongues 
Persuasive,  virgin  majesty  with  mild 
And  sweet  allay 'd,  yet  terrible  to  approach, 
SkilPd  to  retire,  and  in  retiring  draw 
Hearts  after  them  tangled  in  amorous  nets. 

In  these  lines  the  periodic  structure,  the  smooth, 
strong,  upward-circling  movement  of  the  Miltonic 
verse  is  broken  up.  Or  again, 

They  praise  and  they  admire  they  know  not  what, 
And  know  not  whom,  but  as  one  leads  the  other. 
And  what  delight  to  be  by  such  extoll'd, 
To  live  upon  their  tongues  and  be  their  talk  ? 
Of  whom  to  be  dispraised  were  no  small  praise  : 
His  lot  who  dares  be  singularly  good. 

It  is  Milton  still ;  but  Milton  walking  where  once 
he  had  flown. 

This  contraction  and  condensation  is  equally 
marked  in  the  transitions  of  the  Paradise  Regained. 
The  speeches  are  introduced  in  formulary  lines  of  an 
almost  archaistic  stiffness,  a  hieratic  austerity. 

To  whom  our  Saviour  sternly  thus  replied — 
To  whom  our  Saviour  with  unalter'd  brow — 
To  whom  quick  answer  Satan  thus  return 'd — 
To  whom  thus  answer'd  Satan  malcontent — 


MILTON'S   PHRASING  189 

There  are  more  than  twenty  such  lines  in  the  poem, 
the  whole  length  of  which  is  only  that  of  about  two 
books  of  the  Paradise  Lost.  The  effect  of  this  and 
similar  reiterations  is  to  give  the  modelling  of  the 
whole  work  a  fine  but  almost  metallic  hardness ;  it 
is  poetry  still  exquisite  in  quality,  but  stripped  to 
the  last  thread,  trained  down  to  the  last  ounce. 

There  are  one  or  two  passages  in  the  Paradise 
Lost  itself  which  have  anticipatory  traces  of  this 
curious  hard  stenographic  expression.  One  is  worth 
citing.  It  occurs  in  the  episode  in  the  tenth  book  of 
the  transformation  of  Satan  and  his  crew  into  serpents 
— an  episode  which  has  been  very  generally  con- 
demned, and  in  which  it  may  be  fairly  said  that  Milton 
gives  way  to  the  strong  attraction  he  had  always  felt 
for  the  peculiar  poetical  genius  of  Ovid,  and  forgets 
himself  so  far  as  to  be  clever.  This  is  the  passage 
in  question. 

However,  some  tradition  they  dispers'd 
Among  the  heathen  of  their  purchase  got, 
And  fabled  how  the  Serpent,  whom  they  call'd 
Ophion,  with  Eurynome,  the  wide- 
Encroaching  Eve  perhaps,  had  first  the  rule 
Of  high  Olympus,  thence  by  Saturn  driven 
And  Ops,  ere  yet  Dictaean  Jove  was  born. 

The  whole  seven  lines  were  summarily  rejected  by 
Bentley,  with  his  usual  desperate  hardihood  and  with 
something  more  than  his  usual  reason.  "  Let  any 
man  believe,  if  he  can,"  says  he,  "  that  Milton  gave 
such  wretched  nonsense."  That  Milton  gave  it, 


190  MILTON 

nonsense  or  not,  is  what  no  one  but  Bentley  ever 
doubted.  But,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  to  be  remarked 
that  the  seven  lines  are  in  fact  detachable,  both  in 
rhythm  and  substance :  though  they  compose  per- 
fectly with  the  rest,  though  they  even  add  a  fresh 
beauty  of  enrichment,  they  could  be  removed  with- 
out leaving  any  gap.  In  this  respect  the  passage  is 
almost  unique  in  the  poem.  In  the  second  place — 
and  this  is  still  more  interesting — we  can  in  these 
lines  listen  to  Milton's  mind  working,  to  his  thought 
forming  itself.  "  The  serpent,  whom  they  called 
Ophion — with  Eurynome — '  the  wide-encroaching  ' 
— Eve,  perhaps  ?  "  It  is  Milton  thinking  aloud, 
and  his  thought,  as  it  moves  from  point  to  point, 
noting  itself  down  in  words  which  almost  auto- 
matically, as  it  would  seem,  run  into  the  familiar 
mould  of  his  august  rhythm.  But  there  is  this 
singular  result,  that  a  word  is  actually  run  over 
from  one  line  into  the  next :  for  "  wide-encroach- 
ing "  is  in  effect  one  word ;  it  is  hyphened  in  the 
very  carefully  printed  first  edition.  It  is  as  though 
Milton  had  lifted  off  his  hand  for  a  minute  and 
let  the  loom  go  on  working  of  itself,  with  the  result 
that  the  shuttle  swerved  and  made  this  curious 
little  variation  of  pattern.  It  is  a  unique  variation. 
The  nearest  approach  made  to  it  elsewhere  is  in  the 
four  or  five  instances  in  which  the  division  of  lines 
comes  between  an  adjective  and  its  noun — as,  for 
instance, 


THE  LATER   EPIC  191 

A  sapphire  throne  inlaid  with  pure 
Amber,  and  colours  of  the  showery  arch, 


or 


Which  nightly  as  a  circling  zone  thou  seest 
Powder'd  with  stars.     And  now  on  earth  the  seventh 
Evening  arose  in  Eden. 

But  these  are  not  really  parallel. 

The  limits  of  this  study  do  not  allow  me  to  proceed 
to  any  further  consideration  of  the  Paradise  Regained, 
or  of  the  Samson  Agonistes.  Each  requires,  as  each 
more  than  repays,  minute  and  close  treatment.  But 
before  returning  to  Milton's  central  achievement,  one 
thing  must  not  be  omitted,  and  that  is  to  traverse, 
briefly  but  explicitly,  the  strange  and  obstinate  mis- 
apprehension, which  nothing  seems  to  eradicate,  that 
Milton  himself  thought  the  Paradise  Regained  the 
greater  of  the  two  epics.  That  it  possesses  certain 
unique  poetical  qualities  of  its  own  is  undeniable. 
Wordsworth  declared  it  "  the  most  perfect  in  exe- 
cution of  anything  written  by  Milton,"  and  Cole- 
ridge, with  a  more  careful  qualification,  called  it 
"  in  its  kind  the  most  perfect  poem  extant."  But 
what  Milton  said  was  something  quite  different.  The 
words  of  Edward  Phillips  upon  which  the  miscon- 
ception rests  are  these:  "  It  is  generally  censured  to 
be  much  inferior  to  the  other,  though  he  could  not 
hear  with  patience  any  such  thing  when  related  to 
him."  Of  course  he  could  not.  He  could  only  have 
heard  it  with  patience  if  he  had  known  it  to  be  untrue. 


192  MILTON 

The  aloofness  of  Milton,  as  he  moved  in  his  high 
and  solitary  orbit,  is  equally  marked  with  regard  to 
the  influence  exercised  on  him  by  his  immediate 
predecessors,  and  with  regard  to  the  influence  which 
he  in  turn  exercised  on  his  contemporaries  and  on 
the  course  of  English  literature.  He  takes  up  the 
torch  where  Spenser  had  laid  it  down,  almost  as  if 
there  had  been  no  intervening  period.  On  Spenser 
also  the  spirit  of  Puritanism  had  grown  in  his  last 
years.  The  latest  extant  fragment  of  the  Faerie 
Queene  is* much  in  the  Miltonic  spirit  and  manner; 
it  even  anticipates  some  qualities  of  Milton's  rhythm 
and  diction.  In  passing  from  the  one  poet  to  the 
other,  we  have  the  feeling  that  the  whole  Shake- 
spearian age  has  been  but  an  interlude.  There  are 
a  few  lines  in  the  Paradise  Lost  in  which  we  can 
trace  Shakespeare's  influence,  in  which  we  can  catch 
an  echo  of  Shakespeare's  phrasing. 

For  solitude  sometimes  is  best  society, 
And  short  retirement  urges  sweet  return — 

that  is  in  Shakespeare's  earlier,  fluent  and  melodious 
manner. 

Thy  message  which  might  else  in  telling  wound, 
And  in  performing  end  us — 

that  is  in  the  later  Shakespearian  manner,  the  manner 
of  the  tragedies.     In  the  lines, 

To  be  no  more  ;  sad  cure  ;  for  who  would  lose, 
Though  full  of  pain,  this  intellectual  being, 
Those  thoughts  that  wander  through  eternity  ? 


MILTON'S   BORROWINGS  193 

the  accent  is  that  of  Measure  for  Measure.  The 
line, 

When  I  behold  this  goodly  frame,  this  world, 

sounds  as  though  it  came  straight  from  Hamlet. 
And  in  a  very  remarkable  passage — 

If  I  could  hope  to  change  the  will 
Of  him  who  all  things  can,  I  would  not  cease 
To  weary  him  with  my  assiduous  cries — 

a  phrase  taken  directly  from  Dante  is  followed 
strangely  by  one  which  is  almost  verbally  transferred 
from  the  Sonnets.  But  these,  with  one  or  two  other 
instances,  are  so  exceptional  that  they  only  emphasise 
the  general  rule.  No  more  inference  is  to  be  drawn 
from  them  than  from  the  fact  that  one  of  the  love- 
liest lines  in  Lycidas  is  borrowed  from  Middleton, 
and  not  only  so,  but  was  deliberately  altered  by 
Milton  himself  from  his  first  draft  into  a  more  exact 
reproduction  of  Middleton's  wording. 

This  line  is  worth  pausing  over,  because  it  shows 
in  a  very  interesting  way  with  what  fastidious  judg- 
ment Milton  stole  a  phrase,  how  he  weighed  and 
tested  it,  and  how  he  gave  it,  by  a  new  setting,  a 
colour  and  value  that  were  of  his  own  choosing. 
The  Game  of 'Chess ',  a  play  of  Middleton's,  was  pro- 
duced in  1624,  the  year  before  Milton  went  to  Cam- 
bridge. Apart  from  its  poetical  merit,  which  is 
great,  it  had  a  success  of  scandal  from  its  political 
bearing,  and  led  to  strong  representations  from  the 

N 


194  MILTON 

Spanish  Ambassador.  Milton  in  all  probability  saw 
it  represented  before  it  was  withdrawn ;  and  there 
was  much  in  it  which  accorded  with  his  own  temper. 
In  that  play  the  passage  occurs — 

Upon  those  lips 

The  holy  dew  of  prayer  lies,  like  pearl 
Dropt  from  the  opening  eyelids  of  the  morn 
Upon  a  bashful  rose. 

"  Here  for  once,"  says  Mr.  Swinburne,  "  even  that 
celestial  thief  John  Milton  has  impaired  rather  than 
improved  the  effect  of  the  beautiful  phrase  borrowed 
from  an  earlier  and  inferior  poet."     On  such  a  ques- 
tion one  can  only  differ  from  Mr.  Swinburne's  judg- 
ment with  diffidence.     But  it  is  open  to  argument 
whether  the  metaphor  of  tears  dropping  from  eye- 
lids is  not  too  much  in  the  Elizabethan  fashion  to 
satisfy  a  purer  taste.     Certainly  the  phrase  clung  to 
Milton's  memory  :  and  when  he  was  revising  Lycidas, 
he  altered  the  line  as  he  had  first  written  it- 
Together  both,  ere  the  high  lawns  appeared, 
Under  the  glimmering  eyelids  of  the  morn 
We  drove  afield — 

to  the  form  in  which  it  is  universally  known.  What 
is  however  most  interesting,  and  what  throws  a  light 
on  the  whole  question  of  Milton's  borrowings,  and 
of  poetical  borrowings  generally  in  the  hands  of 
great  poets,  is  that  the  phrase,  lying  in  his  mind  for 
years,  had  there  taken  a  new  value  and  meaning. 
It  had  taken  that  "  Doric  delicacy  "  which  is  peculiar 


MILTON'S   BORROWINGS  195 

to  Milton.  Instead  of  the  conventional  image,  it  had 
re-embodied  itself  in  a  new  visual  image  of  wonderful 
truth  and  unexpected  beauty.  It  is  one  which,  like 
so  many  of  Milton's  phrases,  shows  his  extraordinary 
sensitiveness  to  effects  of  light.  The  opening  eye- 
lids of  the  morn  have  become,  not  the  fanciful  source 
of  dewdrops,  but  the  widening  and  brightening 
streaks  of  light  through  bands  of  cloud  on  the  morn- 
ing horizon.  It  is  a  new  image,  comparable  in  deli- 
cate accuracy  to  the  dawn-pictures  of  Shakespeare 
himself,  to  Friar  Laurence's 

Chequering  the  eastern  clouds  with  streaks  of  light, 
or  to  Don  Pedro's 

Dapples  the  drowsy  east  with  spots  of  grey. 

When  we  realise  its  full  beauty,  we  may  not  be  in- 
clined to  think  with  Mr.  Swinburne  that  his  use  of 
Middleton's  image  "is  not  quite  so  apt — so  perfectly 
picturesque  and  harmonious — as  the  use  to  which  it 
was  put  by  its  inventor." 

In  the  whole  range  of  Jacobean  poetry,  the  work 
to  which  Milton  has  most  recourse  is  a  second-rate 
translation  of  a  second-rate  original,  Sylvester's  ver- 
sion of  the  Sepmaine  of  Du  Bartas.  He  borrowed 
much  from  it  in  substance.  He  borrowed,  or  at 
least  did  not  disdain  to  use,  a  few  of  Sylvester's 
happier  phrases :  a  word  like  "  smooth-sliding,"  a 
phrase  like  "  the  winding  rivers  border'd  all  their 


196  MILTON 

banks,"  a  collocation  of  names  like  "  Cincinnatus, 
Fabricius,  Serranus,  Curius."  But  no  contrast  could 
be  more  striking  than  that  between  Milton's  unde- 
viating  magnificence  and  what  a  French  critic  well 
describes  in  his  appreciation  of  Du  Bartas  as  "  efforts 
constants,  quoique  scuvent  malheureux,  vers  la  gran- 
deur " ;  and  the  dismal  versified  school-divinity  of 
the  Gascon  poet  sets  in  higher  relief  the  height  of 
Milton's  achievement  in  fusing  those  lumps  of  shape- 
less lustreless  dross  and  refining  them  into  sombre 
gold.  When  a  style  was  current — nay  more,  where 
a  style  was  almost  universally  admired — in  which 
the  Creator  rates  Adam  like  a  fishwife  and  addresses 
him  as  "  apostate  Pagan  !  "  we  may  excuse  the  one 
or  two  slips  of  the  same  sort  which  Milton  made 
and  left  unblotted — the  "O  hell!"  of  Satan  in 
Paradise,  the  "  O  Eve,  in  evil  hour "  of  Adam, 
for  which  it  is  hardly  sufficient  excuse  that  it  is  the 
language  of  Adam  speaking  after  the  Fall.  These 
are  lapses  as  rare  as  they  are  superficial  and  trivial. 

That  sustained  perfection  of  workmanship,  that 
continuous  planetary  movement "  on  the  highest  arc," 
to  use  Milton's  own  noble  expression,  "  that  con- 
templation circling  upwards  can  make  from  the  glassy 
sea  whereon  she  stands,"  is  one  of  the  reasons  why 
the  Paradise  Lost  supplies  but  few  of  those  single 
jewel-phrases  which  enter  into  the  language,  and 
become  part  of  the  common  thought  of  the  world. 
It  is  but  an  extension  of  the  statement  that  the  poem 


MILTON'S   LANGUAGE  197 

loses  in  detached  quotation.  The  whole  poem  is  a 
quotation ;  it  has  sunk  into  the  national  thought 
and  permanently  raised  the  national  power  of  ex- 
pression, but  it  operates  thus  over  its  whole  extent 
rather  than  at  detached  points.  The  Allegro  and 
Penseroso  alone  have  given  as  many  phrases  of  uni- 
versal currency  to  the  English  language  as  the  whole 
of  the  Paradise  Lost.  There  are  some  half-dozen 
such  in  the  Paradise  Lost — some  half-dozen  of  those 
phrases  which  have  become  so  universally  familiar 
that  they  are  hardly  recognised  as  literature  :  "  con- 
fusion worse  confounded,"  the  "  human  face  divine," 
"  hell  broke  loose,"  "  on  hospitable  thoughts  intent," 
"  to  save  appearances."  The  Serbonian  bog,  like  the 
Cynosure  of  neighbouring  eyes,  has  long  become  a 
phrase  of  journalism  and  lost  all  its  meaning.  There 
are  single  lines  also,  lines  like 

If  shape  it  might  be  call'd  that  shape  had  none, 
or 

Not  to  know  me  argues  yourselves  unknown, 

which  have  similarly  passed  into  the  common  stock. 
But  it  remains  true  in  the  main  that  Milton's  language, 
whether  it  be  severe  or  enriched,  is  not  the  language  of 
mankind.  It  is  a  dialect  spoken  only  by  him  and  a 
few  of  his  peers  ;  they  speak  to  one  another  from  the 
heights,  nee  vox  hominem  sonat ;  except  for  that  lofty 
and  distant  fellowship,  he  moves  alone. 

N  2 


198  MILTON 

The  solitariness  of  his  genius  is  reflected  in  the 
striking  absence  throughout  the  Paradise  Lost  (except 
in  those  fine  passages  where  he  speaks  of  himself)  of 
any  personal  or  contemporary  allusions.  Of  these 
he  had  always  been  sparing,  except  in  occasional 
pieces  like  Lycidas  and  the  Sonnets.  Even  in  the 
Comus  the  exquisite  reference  to  Diodati,  his  closest 
friend,  is  brought  in  so  impersonally  as  almost  to 
escape  notice  : 

A  certain  shepherd  lad, 

Of  small  regard  to  see  to,  yet  well  skill'd 

In  every  virtuous  plant  and  healing  herb 

That  spreads  her  verdant  leaf  to  the  morning  ray. 

He  lov'd  me  well,  and  oft  would  bid  me  sing, 

Which  when  I  did,  he  on  the  tender  grass 

Would  sit  and  hearken  even  to  ecstasy. 

But  in  his  later  years  he  had  few  friends,  and  none 
with  whom  he  fully  shared  his  soul.  In  the  Paradise 
Lost  the  rarity  of  particular  allusions  makes  them  the 
more  impressive,  as  in  the  celebrated  descriptions  of 
the  riotous  streets  of  London  after  the  Restoration, 
and  that  of  the  summer  morning's  excursion  from 
London  to  the  pleasant  countryside  and  the  suburban 
villages  that  lay  all  about  what  was  even  then  an 
overgrown  city.  Even  these  allusions  are  generalised, 
although  the  reference  is  obvious.  One  and  one  only 
of  his  contemporaries  is  mentioned  by  name  :  and  the 
choice  of  that  one  name,  thus  singled  out  for  im- 
mortality, is  highly  significant.  It  is  not  that  of  a 
countryman  of  his  own  ;  it  is  not  that  of  a  soldier  or 


THE   NEW  LEARNING  199 

statesman,  nor  of  a  man  of  letters,  a  poet  or  scholar  or 
theologian.  It  is  that  of  the  most  eminent  man  of 
science  of  that  age,  Galileo,  the  great  Italian  physicist 
and  astronomer.  And  the  title  by  which  Milton 
speaks  of  him  is  no  less  remarkable.  The  Tuscan 
artist,  he  calls  him  ;  as  if  to  indicate  that  science  and 
art  are  in  vital  conjunction,  as  they  were  in  his  own 
person  and  in  his  own  poetry.  Scientific  theology,  as 
it  was  then  understood,  is  of  course  of  the  main  sub- 
stance of  the  Paradise  Lost.  Scientific  astronomy  is 
almost  equally  so.  Of  the  science  of  music,  which 
during  Milton's  lifetime  was  taking  one  of  its  greatest 
advances,  the  many  passages  in  his  poetry  which  deal 
with  music  would  alone  prove  that  he  was  an  ac- 
complished master.  More  generally  we  may  say 
that  Milton  was  in  full  touch  and  full  intellectual 
sympathy  with  the  New  Learning,  with  the  ex- 
panding movement  of  the  human  intelligence  which 
was  absorbing  and  annulling  the  Renaissance.  It 
was  the  age  not  only  of  culminating  Puritanism  and 
of  rising  classicism,  but  of  a  prodigious  movement  of 
advance  in  physical  science.  It  was  the  age  of  the 
foundation  of  the  Royal  Society :  it  was  the  age  of 
Harvey  and  Boyle,  of  Torricelli  and  Pascal.  Before 
Milton's  death,  Newton  had  founded  the  science  of 
optics,  had  invented  the  refracting  telescope,  had 
discovered  though  not  yet  published  the  law  of 
gravitation.  Throughout  the  Paradise  Lost  we  feel 
the  pressure  and  impulse  of  the  great  movement  which 


200  MILTON 

was  on  foot  to  comprehend  the  physical  universe, 
and  which  since  then  has  by  its  progress  and  con- 
quests created  the  modern  world. 

But  in  the  poetry  itself  likewise  the  science  is 
as  wonderful  as  the  art.  The  art  is  science  applied 
to  thought  and  language,  and  transfigured  by  that 
creative  imagination  on  which  the  discoveries  of 
science,  like  the  fabric  of  art,  are  ultimately  based. 
In  the  science  of  his  art  Milton  stands  alone  among 
the  English  poets,  without  equal  or  second.  It  is 
this  beyond  all  else  which  makes  him,  in  the  full 
sense  of  the  word,  a  classic. 

As  a  study  of  the  scientific  quality  of  Milton's 
art,  no  exercise  is  more  useful  than  to  go  carefully 
through  Bentley's  famous  edition  of  1732.  It  is 
seldom  mentioned  except  in  derision.  But  Bentley 
was  no  fool ;  and  he  was  the  first  scholar  of  his 
age.  What  he  did  in  that  work  was  to  go  through 
the  Paradise  Lost  with  absolute  fearlessness,  testing 
it,  line  by  line  and  word  by  word,  by  the  standards 
of  scientific  scholarship.  Twice  he  inserts  a  line 
of  his  own — once  between  lines  810  and  811  of 
Book  IV.,  and  again  between  lines  114  and  115  of 
Book  VII.  In  both  cases  the  line  is  explanatory, 
is  meant  to  complete  the  full  logic  of  what  Milton 
had  put  elliptically,  or  had  left  to  be  understood. 
If  a  sufficient  induction  may  be  drawn  from  two 
instances,  we  may  judge  from  these  that  Bentley's 
mind  worked  very  much  as  Milton's  might  have 


BENTLEY'S   CRITICISM  201 

done  had  Milton  not  been  a  poet.  In  the  apprecia- 
tion of  other  and  more  highly  esteemed  critics  we 
are  apt  to  find  the  converse  defect,  and  of  the  two 
it  is  probably  the  more  dangerous :  that  their  mind 
works  very  much  as  a  poet's  might  have  done  if  that 
poet  had  been  other  than  Milton.  Some  of  Bentley's 
critical  strictures  are  just,  and  even  where  they  are 
unjust,  they  are  always  on  the  point.  Some  of  his 
emendations  have  been  silently  accepted  and  passed 
into  the  received  text :  two  instances  may  be  found 
by  the  curious  in  lines  321  and  451  of  the  seventh 
book.  Some  others  ought  very  likely  to  be  adopted. 
In  VI.  55, 

Into  their  place  of  punishment,  the  gulf 
Of  Tartarus,  which  ready  opens  wide 
His  fiery  Chaos  to  receive  their  fall, 

he  makes  an  unconvincing  alteration,  but  he  points 
out  rightly  that  the  word  Chaos  in  this  context  is  far 
from  satisfactory.  In  X.  329, 

Satan  in  likeness  of  an  angel  bright 

Betwixt  the  Centaur  and  the  Scorpion  steering 

His  zenith,  while  the  sun  in  Aries  rose, 

Bentley  is  almost  unquestionably  right  in  altering  rose 
into  rode.  He  gives  us  no  reasons,  and  only  cites  a 
parallel  phrase  :  but  no  doubt  he  saw  and  grasped 
the  point,  that  rose  is  astronomically  inaccurate,  and 
that  Milton's  astronomy  is  always  scrupulously  cor- 
rect. In  another  astronomical  or  quasi-astronomical 


202  MILTON 

passage  he  proposes  an  emendation  equally  ingenious 
but  more  uncertain.  When  Satan  has  been  expelled 
from  the  Earthly  Paradise  for  the  first  time  (IX.  62), 

Thence  full  of  anguish  driven 
The  space  of  seven  continued  nights  he  rode 
With  darkness  ;  thrice  the  equinoctial  line 
He  circled,  four  times  crossed  the  car  of  night 
From  pole  to  pole  traversing  each  colure. 

"  Cone  of  night,  not  car  of  night,"  says  Bentley : 
"  car  must  have  been  a  mistake  of  the  printer's." 
The  matter  is  not  so  easy  to  decide,  especially  if  we 
consider  that  Milton  may  have  had  somewhere  in 
his  mind  an  echo  of  the  last  line  of  the  second  Idyl 
of  Theocritus. 

But  as  a  rule  Bentley's  criticisms  fall  short  or 
go  aside  because,  with  all  his  great  powers,  he  was 
here  beyond  his  depth.  The  science  of  Milton's 
art,  alike  in  structural  quality  and  in  the  handling 
of  language  and  metre,  was  more  delicate  and 
profound  than  that  which  Bentley  brought  to  bear 
on  its  criticism.  Even  in  the  few  lines  which  we 
may  feel  inclined  to  agree  with  him  in  obelising, 
even  in  the  few  words  which  we  may  feel  inclined  to 
agree  with  him  in  emending,  we  shall  do  well  to 
hesitate  before  thinking  that  we  have  mastered  Mil- 
ton's science,  or  followed  out  the  subtlety  of  his  art. 
The  same  caution  applies  to  the  study  of  classics 
other  than  Milton,  and  to  the  criticism  of  scholars 
inferior  to  Bentley. 


MILTON'S  ACHIEVEMENT         203 

Milton  founded  no  school.  He  gave  no  impulse 
to  letters,  except  that  impulse  received  by  all  true 
artists  when  they  see  and  recognise  consummate  art. 
He  stands  now,  as  he  stood  in  his  own  time,  alone. 
The  only  later  English  poet  who  has  approached 
him  in  aim  and  method,  though  not  in  poetical  power 
or  in  effective  achievement,  has  drawn  what  might 
be  a  picture  of  him  in  lines  that  have  something  of 
Milton's  own  haughty  majesty  : 

No  airy  and  light  passion  stirs  abroad 
To  ruffle  or  to  soothe  him  ;  all  are  quell'd 
Beneath  a  mightier,  sterner  stress  of  mind. 
Wakeful  he  sits,  and  lonely,  and  unmov'd, 
As  oftentimes  an  eagle,  ere  the  sun 
Throws  o'er  the  varying  earth  his  early  ray, 
Stands  solitary,  stands  immoveable 
Upon  some  highest  cliff,  and  rolls  his  eye, 
Clear,  constant,  unobservant,  unabased, 
In  the  cold  light  above  the  dews  of  morn. 

Below  and  behind  lay  the  warm  earth  :  the  green 
woodland  full  of  singing  voices,  the  pleasant  vil- 
lages and  farms,  the  cleared  spaces  where  his  pre- 
decessors had  found  full  scope  for  English  poetry, 
among  "  the  fields  and  the  turreted  cities,"  the  con- 
tinuous life  of  nature  and  the  splendid  and  transitory 
pageant  of  the  lives  of  men,  their  tears  and  laughter, 
their  loves  and  passions,  struggles  and  achievements 
and  failures.  He  passed  above  and  beyond  these 

et  extra 

Processit  longe  flammantia  moenia  mundi 
Atque  omne  immensum  peragravit  mente  animoque. 


204  MILTON 

From  those  supernal  heights  poetry  descended  again 
to  earth,  to  become  a  function  of  life  on  its  daily 
level,  an  interpretation  of  life  to  the  analytic  intelli- 
gence, a  pattern  of  life  as  a  rational  and  bounded 
process.  It  left  the  starry  threshold,  the  golden 
pavement  of  heaven's  immeasurable  floor,  to  pass 
into  and  mingle  with  the  social  movement,  to  bear 
its  part  in  the  progress  of  civilisation.  From  that 
lower  plane,  from  that  more  contracted  sphere,  it 
rose  slowly  again  after  a  long  interval.  It  succes- 
sively reattached  itself  to  nature,  to  romance,  to  his- 
tory. By  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when 
Milton  had  in  his  turn  become  one  of  the  ancient 
classics,  English  poetry  had  rekindled  itself,  had  re- 
newed its  progress,  and  was  launched  once  more  on 
a  new  way. 


THE    END 


Printed  by  BALLANTVNE,  HANSON  <&•  Co. 
Edinburgh  <5r*  London 


I 


NGELES 


LD-Uftl 

OCT011996 


BookE 


UCLA-College  Library 
PR  503  M19S 


L  005  722  561   7 


College 
Library 

PR 

503 

Ml9s 


\KteasBSSSStJSSSaiSSStt 


